SWORDS BROKEN
Shu Lien vs. Jen in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
This the first issue of “Swords Broken,” a series of blog posts about broken swords in media, reality, myth and tradition, parable, et cetera. I’ve got roughly 15 more of these TK in a planning doc. Let me know if you have a broken sword moment I should cover!
October 15th, 2024
I like swords, in the abstract. I do not like bloodshed, war and all that, which presents a troubling contradiction for the swords-liker. On the one hand, playing at swords is very fun, and watching swords done well is one of the most exciting things I can imagine. On the other hand, the historical reality of swords is not “fun” or “cool” at all, really, when given serious thought. We’re not going to get into it here, but this brain problem is where the broken sword interest began to take form. I didn’t even have any particular instances in mind when I turned my focus to broken swords. The image was, I guess, simply latent within me. (Makes sense, as I grew up doing a lot of sword-playing which consisted largely of sticks, breaking.)
Over time, I’ve come to understand that swords make for such good storytelling because they are a shiny, externalized manifestation of the connection between the individual and the society they live in, sharpened and dramatized to the keenest edge and then pitted against each other in artful ways. I’ll have to write more about this later, but for now I will provide these notes:
The individual ― The sword in story enables one to exert or multiply the force of one’s will and refute the will of others, especially of groups who would outnumber the one alone; The sword in story often has to do with destiny, revenge, justice, and other matters of the individual; The sword is iconically used in duels, i.e. the one-on-one.
The group ― The sword cannot exist at all without a huge history and active present of technological development, mining labor, chemistry, trade, smithing, as well as a cultural context that makes a sword and a particular shape of sword appear at all; ...a shape designed specifically for use against other weapons, swords or not; The sword has to do with power; The sword has to do with war.
To continue to overexplain a bit, the tension between these two forces is a common site for stories with enduring relevance, and all the sword-stuff in a story is elevated by focusing on the unresolved ambiguity therein, using the sword to pry open something difficult. Sometimes, when someone is just doing what they’re supposed to, there is no difference between the sword as a tool of the individual and the sword as a tool of the larger society. This, of course, is very boring. Only when these things begin to cleave are there revealed interesting conflicts. Nastiness. But as a reader of a conflict that isn’t real, this can be a fruitful place to think about your position in the likewise very strange and sometimes terrible and crazy world we live in, ideally in order to start defining it more accurately and making more deliberate choices.
Further, swords are an investigative tool in stories about the self and society not just because they’re swords and they do sword things, but notably because they amplify the things that people do. That is, they are used for doing, for willful change or reaction to it, and in amplifying that doingness, they dramatically highlight that one can do too much. This might sound like a very broad, almost stupid thing to say, but hang on to it, because it’s exactly the reason why, in my opinion, this thing we’re here to look at is the perfect sword story.
So, on to the main event. I’m starting out with a banger, because there’s no reason to bury the lead, and this one is the be-all and end-all, as far as I’m concerned. Every other broken sword henceforth will have to be viewed in the context of this one. There is more about it than I am able or qualified to dig into here, but I feel I can do a pretty good job of introducing the themes.
...
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, dir. Ang Lee, come on, you know the one. It’s freaking Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) ...is good. It’s an incredibly entertaining film. When I saw these sword moves and mystic wall jumps at age 10, I was irrevocably changed―not that I understood what I was looking at. I don’t know anything about the original books, I don’t speak the language, and I am not really a Film guy. This is mostly about swords for me. I must also say, though, that this movie falls into my favorite category, which I refer to as “Movies That Are Like That.” In movies that are like that, to be brief, someone is pursuing something with a sort of delirious obsession, and they do a lot of doing, usually too much, and then there is some kind of catharsis or let-down or both.
Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) is a highly skilled martial arts practitioner who has found success and relative freedom, as an unmarried woman, by running a mercenery corporation and providing security to stable clients. People are always telling her she should consider retiring, “settle down and get married” and so on. She is not ready to give up her life as a warrior―wisely, perhaps, as she manages to find some reward for her heart through the trials of her frustration with the events of the story.
Yu Jiaolong (Zhang Ziyi), a.k.a. Jen in the English language release, is the bored daughter of a wealthy state administrator, dissatisfied with her constrained place in society. She trains secretly from an illegitimately obtained copy of the martial arts manual of the predominant school in the story. Her mentor, seemingly a conventional governess, is actually an infamous witch driven by similar animosity for the same exclusionary school and its abusive master. She teaches Jen her own secret arts while Jen withholds her Wudang knowledge from even her. Jen is on the edge. She weighs the possibility of eloping with her former lover, a bandit. She steals a powerful, indestructible sword, the Green Destiny. She runs off and gets in brawls and duels.
Between Shu Lien and Jen, we have a story about two women with very different approaches to working around the confines of the traditional roles assigned to them by the society they live in; both seeking more, both trying to prove something to one another and to themselves. Their confrontation with one another is likewise with everything, and you can feel it in the way the duel plays out.
In the scene in question, Shu Lien has demanded that Jen relinquish the Green Destiny, and Jen has refused. This will be the second time they've fought, and this time Jen has come to see Shu Lien. Up to this point, Jen has already used the Green Destiny to hack apart the weapons of her opponents with ease. It is clear that she is well-trained, but the sword itself has a magic, which, combined with her ambition and seeking behavior, is pulling her along through a story that is now out of her control. She thinks she is wielding the sword, but it’s the other way around. Shu Lien, the older and more conservative of the two, sees this self-destructive drive (it’s not hard to see) and will fight to stop it, for Jen’s sake and for everyone else’s.
In the duel that follows, Shu Lien is forced to use a variety of different weapons and techniques, including hand-to-hand grappling and similarly grabby hook swords, comically heavy bludgeoning instruments, and more, in an attempt to get Jen under control. Everything she puts to Jen is chopped to pieces by the Green Destiny. So are whole racks of weapons nearby caught in the crossfire, before Shu Lien can pick them up, as Jen continues to green-steamroll her way through her problems.
Eventually, in a brief pause, we see Shu Lien reach some kind of epiphany and pick up a jian, finally the same type of sword* as the Green Destiny. In the ensuing exchange, she anticipates Jen’s magic blade cutting straight through her own mundane weapon and takes the opportunity to pass through her opponent’s guard and swift the point of the broken sword up to Jen’s throat, asserting clear victory.
The simplest way to say this is that she “manages to defeat Jen with a broken sword.” Of course, it’s way cooler than that. She doesn’t defeat Jen despite her broken sword―as a flex or the equivalent of a sports handicap. She defeats Jen because her sword is broken, and because Jen relies on breaking swords. Her winning tactic is in diametrical opposition to and direct refutation of Jen's unbreakable sword and her confidence in her reckless drive forward.
It’s up to you, I guess, to see how you feel about where the story goes with this. I enjoy the way its many plot threads conclude in sort of unsatisfying ways, such that we are left thinking “Well, damn,” and charged with taking up the problem-of-doing that was left unresolved for us; breaking through, claiming something unbreakable, or finding a way to use that which breaks.
*CORRECTION 10/16/24: I watched the scene one more time and realized Shu Lien appears to be wielding a two-handed variation on the jian. It definitely has a longer grip, and is probably longer in the blade as well. (From what I understand, “jian” in the sword context just means a straight, double-edged blade, and the category contains some variety.) From some very superficial looking around online, this sounds to me like an older sort of longsword thing that was not in use during the time when this story is set. Fits nicely with Shu Lien’s almost crusading attitude toward Jen’s rebellion, and nevertheless I think the jian-vs-jian thing is still very clear, especially with the camerawork clearly comparing the elaborate Green Destiny with the unadorned, simple blade and hilt of Shu Lien's sword, which breaks accordingly with her lack of attachment to it.
Next: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind →︎