What makes it different from others?

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

This is a film about a little girl who is hungry so she steals bread but she meets a goddess who tells her that her she can be beautiful and rich but that she will never find true love. She is told that her fate is now settled and cannot be changed, now that she has made her promise. I can't recall exactly what the promise was, but it had something to do with all that and her life does indeed turn out that way until a slave, mistaken for a general, kills the girls paramour.It is impossible to explain what is interesting and annoying about this film without skipping to the end. The middle is filled with quite pretty scenes of the king, the slave, the guy from the snow country, the girl, now grown to be a princess, and a few others. The blurb insists that it is the most beautiful film ever made but it is nowhere near that. It is, however, quite pretty. I won't get into how all the characters finish up, but I have to tell you what happens at the very end, so you might want to come back after you have seen the film.There follows, of course, a long series of complicated ups and downs for all the characters until the very end when our heroine seems to have found love indeed. Is the goddess very irritated? Peeved? Not at all. She shows up and blithely tells everyone that promises made to the gods are as fragile as any other and that fate can be changed. Now, I don't know about you, but if I had made some deal with a goddess for some unchangeable fate and then when all the suffering and struggle was over had that goddess tell me that, well, you know, it can all be changed, can't it? I would be seriously angry.I frankly don't know if this is a case of bad writing in which the author couldn't figure out a good ending so he just has the goddess, the moving power behind all of it, show up and say that your should forget all about it or if this is some sort of thing that makes sense to the Chinese way of thinking.In the Buddhist way of thinking there are gods and goddesses, demons and devils, but they aren't really very important and one can well have a form of Buddhism without any gods. Some say that Buddhism is atheistic, but i think goes a bit far. In the Chinese tradition it seems true that the gods are unreliable. Every Chinese village has a shrine to some local god who has the duty of making sure things go well for the village. If things don't do well they tear down the shrine and build a new one to some other god who will jolly well see to it that the village prospers and keeps out of trouble. Perhaps there is something of the sort at work here, I don't know. It is very odd.

I bought this movie randomly in a 'buy two get one free special' and I just picked this up after reading the summary in the back. I really didn't know what to expect to be honest.This is essentially a fairytale with many magical elements added to it. I wasn't sure where the story was going near the beginning, but I was really swept away by how beautiful the whole film was. This story really is about love. However, on saying that, I didn't feel as emotionally engaged as I would have liked in a story like this. There was something a bit missing in terms of these characters but I felt the ending was quite powerful in its own way.What you will admire most is just the awe dropping look of the film and its beautiful landscape. Everything is just gorgeous to look at. Cecilia Cheung is just stunning in almost every scene she is in and some scenes reminded me of scenes I saw in Hero with the leaves and trees blowing. Some of the visual effects are quite cheesy however.Just look at it as a fairytale fantasy because if you don't, then you will definitely not be able to enjoy this film. Some of the plot lines seem a little stupid and the ending is a bit silly. But it's not a film that is meant to be taken seriously anyway.

It is about beauty and meaning. Yes, it is a fairy tale. How refreshing after decades of Disney low-grade tales and looks! This movie makes me feel like china taking over the world would be a good thing : You cant beat Chinese culture. The movie is highly personal and courageous, it is a statement of aesthetics as well as a philosophical one. I love it how it crashes through the preconceived notions, habits and expectations of the audience to bring forth its own powerful vision. I was taken aback at the start but the sheer beauty of some scenes took me into it. Don't ask yourself what it is about, it is just too beautiful for you to care. And there is a whole lot of meaning if you look into it. This meaning is on another level from the one of usual movies. This makes it all the better and more daring. It is soulful. It tells you about the inner worlds, as well as about ethics and decision. It is as a fairy tale should be : inspiring, meaningful, uplifting and strengthening your aliveness and involvement in the world. Helping you reconnect with your purpose and identity. Thank you, whoever made this piece of art. I'm deeply grateful.

This movie is just terrible. It is a bad cover version of western epics like lord of the ring with the Chinese twists. The story is absolute fantasy with no real historical basis. It could be totally legitimate if it is done right. But with all the funky special effects (probably 15 years behind the nowadays standard) and final fantasy(the Japanese video game)like costume and environmental designs, this movie is a hybrid of Asian pop-cultures with no real substance in it. Everything is way too flashy and cliché to be considered as beautiful.it is easy to notice that the script writer tried to complicate the story by having this intertwining love-hate relationships within the characters, which is nothing but a safe way to make the story intriguing. But the rough development and lack of details of the story really doesn't convince me to believe in the emotional status of all the characters in the movie.The choices of the characters are questionable as well. Cecilia Cheung is, quite honestly, more like a drug addict than a princess. Hiroyuki Sanada was supposed to be one of the best actors in Japan, but his performance is totally 'cartoonized' by the horribly bad development of the story.It is just laughable to see how many Chinese directors have become Hollywood wannabes. The typical look of these kind of movies are as epic as possible, but with overly naive stories and logics that make the movies superficial in any aspects.Please give me a break.