Legend of the Mountain

Newly restored in 4K! In King Hu’s masterpiece Legend of the Mountain, a traveling scholar is tasked with translating a Buddhist sutra said to have immense power over the spirits of the afterlife. During his research he loses his way in the mountains, encountering ghostly presences amid a haunting fantasia of color, light and landscape. King Hu rose to prominence in the 1960s and ‘70s as a superb director of wuxia films (A Touch of Zen), a popular Chinese action genre of swords, sorcery and chivalrous heroes. Legend of the Mountain comes from the director’s late period, when his visual artistry was at the height of its powers. The film’s astonishing nature scenes, shot on location in the Korean countryside, are reminiscent of Terrence Malick, while the reflective blend of myth and history is all Hu’s own.