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Clip description
High in the mountains during the long trek to safety, Hansheng Chen (Chow Yun-Fat) tells George Hogg (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) that Lee Pearson (Radha Mitchell) is addicted to opium. Lee is more Chinese than either of them, he continues, and feels deeply about the suffering in China but does not believe she has a future. He asks Hogg to show Lee that she does. Hogg goes over to where Lee is sleeping off the effects of opium withdrawal and tells her that he has never admired a woman as much as he admires her. They embrace.
Curator’s notes
The love between Hogg and Lee develops slowly. They are not often in the same place, Lee is reluctant to get involved and Hogg is uncertain whether Lee and Chen are still lovers. It is Chen that helps the romance along by revealing Lee’s secret to Hogg and by helping him to understand her. Chen also expands on a continuous undercurrent in the film: that most Westerners will never really understand the East.
