胡金銓 山中傳奇

choi

Manohla Dargis,Down a Rabbit Hole in 11th-Century China; King Hu 's 1979 film follows a scholar into the misty mountainside. New York Times, Feb 2, 2018.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/ ... ountain-review.html

Note:
(a) "A magical mystery marathon, King Hu's 胡金銓 'Legend of the Mountain 山中傳奇' takes place (maybe, as the narrator waggishly says) in the 11th century during the Song dynasty. It tells of a cheerful, underemployed scholar, Ho Yunqing 何雲青 (Shih Chun 石雋 [his English name is spelled in Wade-Giles]), who makes a meager living as a copyist. Soon after the movie opens, he is entrusted to copy a Buddhist sutra (a dialogue or sermon [大手印: 藏傳佛教]) that can liberate souls stuck in limbo."
(i) waggish (adj): "dated  humorous in a playful, mischievous, or facetious manner  <a waggish riposte>"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/waggish
(ii) wag (n; etymology): "a person who makes jokes; a joker"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/wag

(b) " 'Legend of the Mountain' is often a visual ravishment. (It was shot in the South Korean countryside.) There's a mesmerizing appeal to many of its panoramas, with their variegated colors, dense vegetation and drifting, swirling white mist. And while King Hu certainly likes to move the camera — it sweeps, swoops and sometime breaks into a near-run — he also likes to linger on images"
(i) ravish (vt; ultimately from Latin verb rapere seize, rob):
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ravish

This dictionary does not have a separate Web page for the noun. "Ravishment."
(ii)
(A) The phrase "at a near run" means: almost running. It is not in any online dictionary. But if you google the phrase -- bracketed by quotation marks -- you will agree.
(B) Hence the phrase differs from
near-run (adj):
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/near-run

(c) "Despite being warned away by a stranger, Ho at last makes it to the outpost, where a story of sorts emerges, along with allies and other figures who prove more sinister. Mysterious women (the equally charismatic Hsu Feng and Sylvia Chang) come and go, as does an enigmatic lama (Ng Ming-choi 吳明才) with an open, cherubic face and splendid yellow vestments. There are digressions and some wonderful visual fillips — beautifully curved trees and noble stone statues lined up like soldiers. All these attractions are a necessary balm given that Ho turns out to be a deeply uninvolving character (Mr Shih mostly smiles, grimaces or looks amazed), a wan placeholder for a character in a narratively thin film that runs over three very leisurely hours."

uninvolving (adj): "failing to engage someone's interest or attention; dull  <a pointless and uninvolving storyline>"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/uninvolving
(d) "A giant of Chinese cinema, King Hu (1932 [born in Beijing] -1997) is best known for his wuxia films ('A Touch of Zen 女俠 [1971; starring 徐楓]'), martial arts stories involving heroic deeds, quests, swordplay and the supernatural. 'Legend of the Mountain,' a 1979 film that has been restored to the director's cut, is more wuxia-adjacent though it does feature some fight sequences in which characters go fantastically airborne, defying gravity with bounce and somersaults. Amusingly, the main choice of weapons isn't swords but drums that opponents beat — with insistent, galloping fingers — to create a powerful, mystical sonic force. The drumming is wonderful and suitably hypnotic even if it doesn't necessarily pull you under the film's own spell."

director's cut
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director%27s_cut

(e) "Legend of the Mountain
Director King Hu
Writer King Hu
Stars Chun Shih, Feng Hsu 徐楓, Sylvia Chang 張艾嘉, Hui Lou Chen 陳慧樓, Rainbow Hsu 徐彩虹"