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This is also the first time Zhang has worked with Hong Kong actors, let alone two of its biggest stars. Leung and Cheung, more accustomed to the spontaneous riffing of Wong Kar-wai, are struggling to get the gist of Zhang's directorial technique. "He does keep us guessing," Cheung says, with a hint of exasperation, "but then we only do one or two takes for every scene. He doesn't do lots of options." Contrast this with Wong, who might shoot one scene 30 or 40 times, 15 of which are experiments that help shape the final cut in his mind. "Zhang does have a very strong idea of what he wants," says Leung. "It's just that we don't." When told Cheung and Leung are bewildered at how little he seems to direct them, Zhang chuckles. "There's a Chinese maxim that says if you're playing a perfect drum, you don't need to pound it," he says. "The gentlest tap is all it takes to get what I want from such capable actors." That's the single most striking feature of watching Zhang Yimou's work: his selection of the perfect instruments to maximize the tone he wants.

In the new film Zhang is extending this ability to create a new form of action scene: rhythmic, poignant and majestic. Yen, whose working relationship with Li goes back a decade, sees that. He's fresh off success in the U.S. where Yuen Wo-ping's 1993 classic Iron Monkey, in which Yen plays a lead, was rereleased by Miramax and made $10 million at the box office. He applauds Zhang's command of a new style: "For a guy who has never directed action, he's got a nuance for certain pauses, certain breaks. He never stops looking at the bigger picture and perfecting as he sees fit. Me? I'd just get it over with."

Zhang can be patient because he seems to have the master reel already filmed and locked away in his head. "I don't start shooting until I know exactly how every scene will look," he says. And he's not exaggerating. He delights in the minutiae of his vision. The rhythm. The angles. His taciturn bearing vanishes as he pantomimes the way his camera will trace the edge of Jet Li's sword or follow a tear down Cheung's cheek. When Cheung complains that he makes her cry too often, he counters, "Nothing moves me more than the sight of a woman crying onscreen."

In his search for perfection, he'll travel hundreds of kilometers to find the ideal backdrop for each scene. Before the shoot in Heng-dian, the 300-strong crew crisscrossed mainland China from Dunhuang in the northwest of Gansu province to Jiuzhaigou in northern Sichuan. Last year, the company dropped everything to head for an ancient oak grove in Inner Mongolia to shoot a fight scene between Cheung and Zhang Ziyi at the height of the fall foliage. "I had a guy out there specifically to keep an eye on the leaves," says Zhang. "He made videotapes of their progress as they turned from green to yellow. I'd call every day. 'What do they look like?' 'Too green. Still too green.'" As soon as half the leaves were golden, the crew rushed north. Says Zhang: "We used three or four cameras simultaneously at different angles. And the leaves had to be perfectly yellow. We even implemented a leaf classification system. Special-class leaves could be blown in the actors' faces, first-class in front of them, second-class behind them and third-class were scattered on the ground." A mat gathered leaves as they fell so the crew could collect, clean and classify them, then gently send them drifting back down again.

Out of such obsessiveness emerge images of seemingly effortless beauty. Zhang shows us the unedited six-and-a-half-minute sequence from the Mongolian shoot, a scene so breathtaking it will no doubt earn a place in the cinematic pantheon. Dazzling in red costumes against a pale yellow sun, the two women ballet rather than battle it out, leaping over the treetops and chasing each other's dress trains, while leaves, fanned by the wind, drift down like confetti tossed by an admiring god. It's as though Zhang took a French impressionist canvas for a backdrop and spooled it onto the lens—a Monet brought to life by two dancing scarlet brushes.

On our last night, we watch Cheung and Leung play a key love scene. As they lie silently side by side, lost in the folds of meticulously rumpled bedsheets, the status of their relationship is vague. Technique must do the talking. The camera travels tantalizingly to the bed and slowly brings the two characters into sharper focus. Four bamboo blinds, spaced at 1-m intervals, must be consecutively raised as the camera zooms in. The four crew members who are perched on the rafters controlling the blinds like marionettes are getting far more attention than the actors. "Action." The blinds are raised. Zhang hates it: "Too fast. Too impatient, blinds three and four." "Action." "Too messy. Keep your hands steady." And again and again. For more than an hour.

This isn't working. Several times, Doyle opens his mouth as if to offer advice, but keeps silent. The crew looks increasingly baffled, while Zhang, implacable, works to reconcile the chaos before him with his well-ordered mental storyboard: positioning Maggie Cheung's fingers on the bed, adjusting the speed at which the blinds raise, finding the exact camera angle and revelatory moment when Cheung and Leung come into full focus. Finally, as the minutes tick by, he just sits and thinks. The only movement in the room is the gentle swaying of the blinds—four heartbeats. But when shooting resumes, he explodes. "You guys," he wails, looking up at the rafters, "you just don't understand blinds."

The tension pants at this point, so he chooses to break it. "Maggie," he deadpans, "I think you need to cry." She grimaces in mock frustration. Zhang tells the crew to let the blinds swing. "Action." The blinds sway and raise. Seconds slide by on the monitor ... 23, 24, 25 ... but Zhang doesn't call a halt. Finally, everyone understands what the fuss is all about. The scene on the monitor is vintage Zhang, slower than an embrace, more urgent than a call. When he cries "cut!" the crew responds with gasps, sighs and smiles, a collective glow of postcreative consummation. "Let's get a drink," cracks a weary Doyle.

As we prepare to leave, it's well past midnight. The crew is gone but Zhang Yimou is still awake, working alone in his editing-room-cum-dormitory, poring over the day's rushes. For sure he's tired, but the creative fire is still burning bright. Did someone say pressured? You would hardly sense it, to see the way this Hero works.