There is undoubtedly that the whole film is full of China aesthetics. HHH is known as his long take, and this film is also match his style. Though Hou hat many cuts to illustrate other roles’ view and actions, he still maintained fixing the camera’s lens and having people act from edge to edge. But I noticed that he would choose pictures overlapping like Von Trier did in Europa to show time elapsing or appearing of assassin. Sometimes he would do long take along with long shot, which absolutely presents real Marshal Art’s soul, the definitely China aesthetics, and during this period, the moving of time seems slow motion or even stop for a while. However, this is a type of magician’s trip, an illusion, when we feeling our time keeping moving forward in ordinary, but just the scene looked like a little boring, the true is that we were cheated by the method of long take which looked somehow like slow motion, and we have to aware of that the time is in normal frequency passing, or it is easy to miss time, just as the film, which is not short and has over 90 minutes. If we only recalled the whole plot without discussing something else, we will find that there is merely some sentences covering all. (Part 1, Hou’s art in The Assassin)