What a view | Love of Thousand Years: Amazon Prime’s Chinese drama delivers, despite an awkward title
- Over the course of 30 episodes, a vengeful princess sets out to settle a score that left much of her kingdom dead
- To save the world from more suffering she needs to get her hands on a spiritual lamp, and a certain someone doesn’t want that to happen
What are we left with when life imitating art, imitates life? Why, Love of Thousand Years (Amazon Prime), of course, in which a vengeful princess sets out to settle a score on a 30-episode quest (and that’s just season one).
It’s a big score: king, queen, other royals and just about all the Li Kingdom townsfolk have been massacred by the monstrous, black-clad army of the Tianyuan Kingdom. The black-clads are a genuinely nasty bunch, noted for demon worship among other bad habits. Meanwhile, floating between them and the good (mostly dead) guys is Lord Jiuyun (Zheng Yecheng), a mischievous immortal with supernatural powers who hangs out on Xiangqu Mountain.
Jiuyun is the key to the entire saga: having glimpsed the princess, Li Yan (Zhao Lusi), in a magical, animated scroll, he has been searching for her for a thousand years. And now here she is!
As the bloodbath’s sole survivor, she has taken on a disguise in her search for the ancient spiritual lamp (the only device that can save the world from more suffering), but Jiuyun isn’t fooled. The real problem is that he happens to be the lamp’s guardian … putting the would-be lovers on a collision course that will demand the sacrifice of one or the other.
The seemingly inexhaustible supply of Chinese pseudo-historical romance-dramas can be patchy, but Love of Thousand Years (regardless of the clunky translation) maintains the high standards of storytelling and cinematography expected of such glossy productions.
The stars’ faces may be over-airbrushed and their acting overwrought at times, but shows such as these always rouse themselves when it comes to their big set pieces, especially the battles. The swords are just as significant as the sorcery.