A Touch of Zen
Not only one of the great wuxias but one of the great Chinese films, King Hu’s magisterial, three-hour-plus epic A Touch of Zen was the first of its kind to take a prize at Cannes. A production as mammoth as its running time, its influence is often cited by its disciples – most notably director Ang Lee – even as the transcendent qualities of both its form and craft prove matchless.
A journey into enlightenment steeped (as its title suggests) in Buddhist philosophy, it was originally exhibited in two parts, the stunning centrepiece of its bamboo forest battle straddling the two. Hu’s reconceptualisation of martial arts cinema challenges and subverts convention, as much through his orchestration of movement and mise-en-scène as through his aesthetic and philosophical enquiries. No one on this list can touch Hu at his peak, and A Touch of Zen’s upcoming big-screen outing as part of the Chinese cinema season (given the inadequacy of its current home video transfer) is simply unmissable.