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Originally
conceived by Bruce Lee as both a star-making vehicle
for him and a way to introduce his Zen Buddhist
philosophy to a wide audience, Circle
of Iron was finally filmed years after
his untimely death. Lee created the story with
friend James Coburn and screenwriter Sterling
Silliphant (In the Heat
of the Night), who later had a hand in
the finished script. In the form that it reached
the screen Circle of Iron
has many flaws, several of which are so obvious
that they could easily have been corrected. But
I still find it to be a very satisfying movie.
I may be one of the few.
Cord (Jeff Cooper) has heard
legendary stories of a man named Zetan who guards
a great book of ancient wisdom, purported to have
the answers to the everything. To earn the right
to find Zetan, Cord enters a contest of martial
arts champions whose prize is to be set on the
Seeker's path. His unwillingness to accept the
rules of the contest disqualifies him but he resolves
to follow the chosen Seeker anyway. Soon after
Cord starts on his journey he meets a blind man
(David Carradine) whose martial arts prowess is
remarkable but who answers every question with
another question. Amused —
then irritated —
by the blind man, Cord is soon thrust into the
role of the Seeker when the chosen is killed in
the first trial of the journey. Using a bit of
knowledge given to him by the blind man, Cord
is able to best the leader of a group of "monkey
men" (played by Carradine as well) and pass
the first obstacle. From there on he is guided
by clues from each trial and repeatedly encounters
the blind man. Cord's journey carries him from
place to place, meeting The Man in Oil (Eli Wallach),
Chang-Sha (Carradine again) and Chang-Sha's ninth
wife, Tara (Erica Creer). With her husband's consent
Cord shares a night of pleasure with Tara, breaking
his vow of chastity just as The Man in Oil had
foretold. On awakening from this night he discovers
Tara crucified and Chang-Sha's band of travelers
gone. Alone and heartbroken, he now encounters
the feral, black-clad Death (Carradine) in a test
of his fears. At this point Cord tries to enlist
the flute-playing blind man as his teacher, but
his humorous, cryptic answers to every question
our hapless hero asks forces him to abandon the
idea. When Cord meets Chang-Sha again he is finally
shown the way to Zetan's (Christopher Lee) island
to see the mystical book. Will the answers the
hero seeks be found between its covers, or must
he face another trial?
This was originally filmed
as The Silent Flute,
which would have been the perfect title —
it relates directly to the ultimate lesson Cord
learns. A box-office failure, the film was greeted
by critics and filmgoers alike with a collective
shrug. As much as I like it I doubt it would've
fared any better under a different title. I'll
admit that until this DVD release I'd never seen
the whole thing from beginning to end, only sampling
bits and pieces on pay cable in the '80s. I'm
glad I waited. Seeing the film now I find it very
entertaining and much attuned to my own outlook
on life. What could be seen by some as a loose
collection of scenes with little linking them
together, I found instead to be a series of lessons
couched in a basic narrative.
The film is exciting, funny
and at times very thoughtful. There are lines
of dialog here that I'm already quoting to my
friends simply for laughs but also because they
contain a bit of wisdom. The movie has often been
criticized for not being a full-blooded action
film but that was never the intention. The action
scenes are well staged, with an emphasis
on the reasons for the fight and not just the
ass-kicking. This makes for a more satisfying
series of battles and makes the journey we're
following seem dangerous as well as enlightening.
I guess the audience for this film is pretty narrow:
action/martial arts fans with the patience for
dialog and a loosely structured plot. Of course,
the history of action films could almost be summed
up as 'plotted loosely or not at all' but actually
listening to dialog does seem to be too much to
ask of a lot of folks. That's a shame, as this
film has much going for it and is only strengthened
by the conversations between the characters.
I'm
not such a fan of this film that I'm unaware of
its flaws, with the most obvious being the casting.
While David Carradine does a great job with all
four of his roles, his insistence on casting his
sparring partner Jeff Cooper in the lead is a
damaging blow to the movie. With his California
beach bum looks, limited acting skills and very
American pronunciations he comes close to derailing
the story at times. Often he is quite good in
the part, but the moments when he's flat or just
wrong balance those out to a kind of null sum.
I end up feeling he doesn't hurt the movie as
much as he just doesn't help. Also, the film never
makes it clear that no one but Cord seems to hear
the flute music of the blind man until the end
of the story. As this turns out to be fairly important
later, more effort should've been made to convey
this information. The other flaws are minor, starting
with the small budget (that's hidden pretty well
for the most part). Shooting in Israel added immeasurably
to the scale with a few well done matte paintings
successfully creating an otherworldly feel in
many shots. It was ambitious to shoot this with
the attempt to give it a timeless texture and
for the most part it works —
but
there are moments when the budget constraints
do show. There is only one other flaw that bothers
me enough to mention. The encounter with Death
is both too short and irritatingly solarized to
give the sequence a strange dreamlike look that's
just awful. I understand that there were problems
with the skintight black costume Carradine wears
as the character which made filming this night
scene difficult, but the answer was not
to make the shots look even crappier by screwing
with the image this way. I'm inclined to agree
with the director and just be glad the scene is
as short as it is while still getting across the
necessary ideas.
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Blue
Underground seems to be taking advantage of the
new awareness of Carradine with the success of
Kill Bill by releasing
DVDs of this film and Cannonball.
Regardless of the reasons I'm thrilled that they're
out and have been treated so well. I can't vouch
for past video incarnations of Circle
of Iron but the film looks and sounds fantastic
here, remastered from the original negative. Except
for some grain in a few darker scenes and a brief
flicker in a couple of the matte-enhanced shots,
it looks perfect. The film is gorgeously photographed
on beautiful locations and the 1.78:1 letterboxed
print shows them off to great effect. Happily
this version has the onscreen title The Silent
Flute, which is how I'll always think of it
now. On the audio side is a Dolby clean up of
the film's Mono soundtrack that sounds very clear
and crisp. There's no 5.1 option but BU saved
the disc space for a stack of extras.
There's
an interview with David Carradine (14 min.) in
which he relates how he heard of the script and
remarks that it's his favorite of his movies.
Then there's a surprisingly good commentary with
director Richard Moore. I feared this would be
another of those spotty tracks in which long gaps
of silence denote when the subject is simply watching
the movie. Luckily he's joined by the well-prepared
David Gregory, who prompts him along and makes
this extra worth a return visit. Moore has many
stories to tell and I was especially touched to
find out about his serious romance with Erica
Creer. There is a text piece entitled Bruce
Lee's The Silent Flute: A History that details
why even when the newly successful Lee could have
made this film — a pet project — he ultimately
chose not to. Also included for reference is the
alternate Circle of Iron
title sequence taken from what looks to be a video
master. Then there's the theatrical trailer, three
TV spots and a nice poster/still gallery that
even covers various examples of videotape box
art from around the world. For those with DVD-ROM
capabilities there's a copy of the 70-page first
draft script written by Lee, Coburn and Silliphant.
I was enormously surprised
by how much I enjoyed this movie and I hope that
this DVD will encourage more people to see this
beautiful but flawed gem.
10/01/04
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