Our Land

[RiverNotch]

i knew this was related to hero! fun fact: 'our land' is a bad translation of the ideogram. i found it kinda distasteful at first, the movie, until, on reading up, i learned that the original subtitles translated the term differently, to something that sounds a lot less propagandistic: "All under heaven".

The ultimate message I got from the film was, "All must sacrifice themselves to the one central authority, no matter how terrific they are personally (to avoid disorder)."  Tarantino was undoubtedly constrained toward that conclusion.

As to the meaning of the ideogram, unless "All under heaven" implies a reservation that the lands where other peoples live are *not* under heaven, it could be taken as more threatening than "We're a sword of a nation."  Perhaps it's more like what Americans mean when they say, "God's country" - that is, God is over all countries but has a particular fondness for this one.  Which is chauvinistic, but not aggressively so.

@billy - well, debt and credit aren't quite the same thing, though one can degenerate into the other.  And then there's "social credit," another of those phrases where prepending "social" alters the meaning beyond recognition.

That made me cringe -- the movie, that is, and the English dub having that translation. but the way 'all under heaven' was a good deal more, how does it go? zen or whatever than what that kinda surface-level reading implies; i think some go even further in saying 'peace under heaven'. the movie definitely talks about surrendering to a central authority, but i have a feeling that the authority it's talking about is not the king per se -- that, by king ruling and the assassins trying to kill him and so on and so forth, they themselves have surrendered to that, er, invisible hand that controls all, which we can only best describe as whatever's beyond heaven. there is definitely a strong element of authoritarian propaganda in the film, but that force really isn't held by the king, especially when one considers that this film is only fiction to a point: that the characters all, in the end, work towards making China 'China', that their lives are constrained by history, etc etc.

that is to say, i don't think the movie really maps to the real political situaion in the way say, triumph of the will did or, say, spielberg's lincoln does now. i think it talks about something much more, especially with much of its story and presentation not really focusing on making the establishment feel grand as it is, instead having much of the film's beauty be rooted in the interplay between the vibrant colors of the humans, the unchanging landscape in which they are placed, and the graceful motions they make when fighting, when makiy history -- its message is ultimately a lot broader, although the way it's shown (and by the people who show it), it comes dangerously close to being something not fun. and i'm not inclined to lean into that 'not fun' reading, especially because, even if China represents a greater threat to our national sovereignty than the west, they're still the newcomers in this cultural game.