Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale

Wei Te-sheng's blood-soaked epic offers impressive depictions of Taiwan's magnificent landscapes and brave characters.

Taiwan was a Japanese colony from 1895 until 1945. In 1930, the Seediq tribe, one of the aboriginal peoples who first settled on the mountainous land, rose up against the Japanese.

The film provides in-depth exploration of a little-known episode in history and the relationship between civilization and barbarism, and good and evil.

But due to the bizarre title, the 150-minute length and lousy marketing, it didn't perform very well in the mainland box office.

White Deer Plain

The film has been the talk of the town since it was a concept. The novel it is based on was supposed to have been un-filmable because of the scale of the saga it deals with, the time span of 50 years and the more than 20 main characters.

Director Wang Qu'an, a native of Shaanxi province, where the story is set, successfully brings the look and feel of the region and its people to the silver screen. Color and setting become vivid parts of the story.

However, Wang has had to deal with the clash between the story's completeness and censorship. The film was cut from the original 300 minutes to two hours. The ensemble cast was replaced by a focus on Tian Xiao'e, a femme fatale.

Maybe the story is, from the very beginning, too grand for a film's format and for today's industry environment.