We must fight even if we cannot win*

by chuckofish

It’s Friday again! The best thing about this week was a diverting couple of hours I spent watching the 2008 Chinese movie, Red Cliff, an epic retelling of a war that took place in 208 AD, during the waning years of the Han Dynasty. Cao Cao, the power-hungry and cruel prime minister, browbeats his weak young lord into allowing him to attack the last independent warlords, Sun Quan and Liu Bai. Upon discovery of Cao Cao’s impending invasion, the two leaders unite, though the odds are definitely against them. What makes the movie stand out are the brilliant tactics that the warlords’ strategists, Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang, use against the invaders. (Apologies if I’ve gotten any of the names/characters mixed up. There are a lot and Chinese can be confusing.) Here is the great warrior tactician Zhou Yu.

And here is the master strategist Zhuge Liang. Although representing different components of the tenuous alliance, they become fast friends.

In the initial confrontation Zhou Yu and Liu Bai overcome their opponent’s numerical superiority with a tortoise formation, a maze of narrow, shifting shield wall passages in which to trap and kill the enemy cavalry. It’s a very cool scene and one of many clever stratagems that the two sides use. I won’t ruin the movie by revealing any more of them.

Meanwhile, Cao Cao sails a massive fleet of ships down the Yangtze to blockade the allied stronghold, Red Cliffs. The fleet of large, oddly chunky Chinese warships is impressive to say the least.

One of the things I particularly like about the film is that the two lead women act with great courage and equal cunning to the men, all while remaining feminine. The women’s roles feel natural and not, as in so many of today’s movies, inserted to demonstrate that women are equal to or better than men.

Another positive is that although Cao Cao is definitely a bad guy, he has some depth and he is intelligent. If anything, he is a tragic character, someone who had once been noble but who gave in to his base ambition and traded his honor for power.

This film is epic in the true sense of the word, and for a war movie, the violence is restrained; it is neither the focus, nor meant to titilate viewers. The point is to take real events and turn them into something extraordinary and heroic. As my middle son pointed out to me, the film is similar to The Iliad in that heroes engage in single combat while nameless foot soldiers fight around them, women both motivate and participate in events, and the advantage veers wildly between the two sides as each tries desperately to neutralize the enemy. Above all, the film reminds us to use our brains to even the odds and that sometimes “we must fight even if we cannot win”. With an attitude like that you never know what might happen.

Have a heroic weekend!