Dis­cov­er the reli­gious alle­go­ry of this epic King Hu wuxia

The open­ing of King Hu’s Rain­ing in the Moun­tain tracks a par­ty of three shot wide, on a jour­ney through a range of nat­ur­al land­scapes and weath­ers. Their deter­mined pro­gres­sion makes this look like a pil­grim­age – an impres­sion which appears to be con­firmed by their des­ti­na­tion, the seclud­ed ​‘Three Trea­sures’ tem­ple in Ming Dynasty Chi­na (the Bul­guk­sa tem­ple com­plex in South Korea was used as the film’s shoot­ing location).

Even after they have reached the out­er gates, their jour­ney is far from over, as these three pro­fane trav­ellers are slow­ly escort­ed by the monk Hui Ssu (Paul Chin Pei) through the vast precinct – and intro­duced, as we are, into the oth­er­world­ly seren­i­ty of the monastery’s envi­rons. This pro­logue is also an ini­ti­a­tion of sorts.

Of course, to enter this holy place is also to cor­rupt it, and Rain­ing in the Moun­tain con­cerns itself with this inter­pen­e­tra­tion of the mate­r­i­al and the tran­scen­den­tal, in a tran­sient world where every­thing is always in motion. The ​‘three trea­sures’ on which the tem­ple was found­ed and for which it was named – ​“the Bud­dha, the Dhar­ma and the Samgha [the monas­tic com­mu­ni­ty]” – are decid­ed­ly of a spir­i­tu­al rather world­ly kind, but locked away in the temple’s Scrip­ture Hall is a fourth trea­sure: a tran­scrip­tion of the Mahayana Sutra said to have been hand­writ­ten by the famous Tang Dynasty monk Xuan­zang (aka Trip­i­ta­ka) himself.

One of the three vis­i­tors, the wealthy landown­er Esquire Wen (Sun Yueh), con­sid­ers this scroll to be ​“price­less” and ​“one of a kind”, because ​“mon­ey can’t buy it” – and so he has hired White Fox (Hsu Feng) and Gold Lock (Wu Ming-tsai), under the respec­tive guis­es of his con­cu­bine and valet, to steal this object for him dur­ing their stay.

The shift­ing val­ue of the scroll is one of the film’s cen­tral themes. The district’s gov­er­nor Gen­er­al Wang (Tien Feng) also con­sid­ers it ​“a price­less trea­sure”, and also hopes to steal it via the under­hand­ed oper­a­tion of his lieu­tenant, the law offi­cer (and ex-con) Chang Cheng (Chen Hui-lou). Yet even though White Fox scorns the monastery’s sim­ple food, and deems the tem­ple a ​“dump”, she con­sid­ers the sutra noth­ing more than a ​“ragged old scroll”.

It’s a per­spec­tive which brings her into unex­pect­ed align­ment with the monastery’s wise old Abbot (Kim Chang-Gean) – ​“it’s no trea­sure,” he says, ​“just a roll of tat­tered paper” – and with the Abbot’s equal­ly wise lay advi­sor Mas­ter Wu Wai (Wu Chia-hsiang), who com­ments, ​“The old scroll has no real value.”

Age­ing and ill, the Abbot has invit­ed Esquire Wen and Gen­er­al Wang, as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of world­ly wealth and pow­er, to assist him in choos­ing a suc­ces­sor. Asked by Wu Wai if he has any cri­te­ria, the Abbot responds: ​“I have none. It doesn’t mat­ter whether he is a monk or a lay­man, so long as he is enlight­ened.” That last pro­vi­so, of course, is hard­er to ful­fil than it sounds.

In the run­ning for this post are the monastery’s expe­ri­enced trea­sur­er Hui Wen (Lu Chun), who has Esquire Wen’s endorse­ment, and the younger Hui Tung (Shih Chun), whom Gen­er­al Wang sup­ports, and the Abbot’s loy­al dis­ci­ple Ssu. But the ambi­tion, cor­rupt­ibil­i­ty and even will­ing­ness to com­mit crimes har­boured by two of these monks, and the poten­tial divi­sive­ness of the third, cast doubt over their fit­ness for a high office where both reli­gious and polit­i­cal con­cerns must be reconciled.

Mean­while, there is ​“a world­ly mat­ter to attend to”: the arrival of Chiu Ming (Tung Lin), a (false­ly) con­vict­ed crim­i­nal who has pur­chased a per­mit to become a monk, and whose grat­i­tude, for­give­ness, uncom­plain­ing ser­vice and Sto­ic sub­mis­sion to fate mark him as a bet­ter Bud­dhist than many of the monks around him. Var­i­ous, var­i­ous­ly thwart­ed attempts by White Fox, Gold Lock and Chaag Cheng to steal the Scroll are set against scenes in which the monks Wen, Tung and Ssu have their qual­i­ties for­mal­ly test­ed by the Abbot and Wu Wai, so that every human action in the film is framed in moral and spir­i­tu­al terms, and every char­ac­ter can – which is not to say will – choose to fol­low the path to enlightenment.

King Hu is most famous for the 1971 wux­ia in which he sea­soned mar­tial arts with A Touch of Zen. In many ways Rain­ing in the Moun­tain inverts that struc­ture, weav­ing a small num­ber of kung fu sequences into a much broad­er reli­gious alle­go­ry. The Three Trea­sures Tem­ple is a place of intrigue, where the holy and the sec­u­lar clash and some­times col­lab­o­rate in a strug­gle to main­tain bal­ance. But this strug­gle is for the most part con­duct­ed peace­ably, with theft, cor­rup­tion and vio­lence ulti­mate­ly acknowl­edged as unwel­come intru­sions to repent rather than norms to cel­e­brate and embrace.

Ulti­mate­ly, for all its sedate visu­al beau­ty and Hen­ry Chan’s mobile cam­er­a­work, Rain­ing in the Moun­tain priv­i­leges con­tent over form, and locates ​“true val­ue” in a text’s mean­ing rather than in its mate­ri­al­i­ty. How appro­pri­ate, then, that the orig­i­nal 35mm reels should now be avail­able on mul­ti­ple DVD and Blu-ray copies in the Tai­wan Film Institute’s 2K dig­i­tal restora­tion, observ­ing tra­di­tions while also adapt­ing to a chang­ing world. The film is well worth the viewer’s pilgrimage.

Rain­ing in the Moun­tain is released on Dual-For­mat DVD Blu-ray by Eure­ka! Enter­tain­ment as part of their The Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma Series in a 2K restora­tion on 24 February.