Magnificently directed by Kaige (Farewell My Concubine) this story is a strange fable following the travels through Northern China of a blind master musician, who, as a child, had been promised by his mentor that, when he finally breaks the thousandth string on his sanxian, he would regain his sight, and his similarly afflicted, but more cynical, apprentice, whose desire is for a family life. Here we have conflict between age and youth, spirituality and physicality, discipline and disobedience, and the presence and absence of faith and hope. Rarely have landscapes been photographed so stunningly and music in a film been so haunting.