“They look so beautiful, like a woman”: The symbolism of John Woo’s obsession with doves
The majority of auteurs have their favoured set of stylistic tricks, techniques, and foibles they’ll fall back on in the majority of their productions, but John Woo has several, and many of them fly directly in the face of each other.
He shot to prominence as the figurehead of heroic bloodshed, the bullet-riddled offshoot of the ‘Hong Kong New Wave’ that emerged towards the end of the 1970s and ended up having a seismic impact on the action genre, with Woo leading the charge by knocking out classic after classic after classic.
A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard Boiled are three of the greatest and most influential actioners ever made, and they’re all threaded together by Woo’s unmistakable style. Balletic shootouts, morally upstanding protagonists, Mexican standoffs, sky-high body counts, latent homoeroticism, extensive slow motion, and both heroes and villains adhering to a rigid code of honour are all among his trademarks.
Then there are the doves, which regularly take pride of place, soaring through the shot, with their symbolism being intentionally oxymoronic. The white birds are viewed as symbols of peace, freedom, and love, which makes their presence in so many blood-spilling epics with shell casings strewn over the floor seemingly fly – no pun intended – in the face of the violence unfolding around them.
Of course, that was Woo’s intention from the start, not to mention their aesthetic value. “I like doves. They look so beautiful, like a woman,” was his self-assessment. “For me, they represent peace, and love, and purity.” They’re also reflective of his own religious beliefs, with the filmmaker’s Christianity ensuring that he holds the humble dove particularly clear.
In his eyes, “white doves represent purity and spirit” and are often deployed as a direct counterpoint to the carnage unfolding around them. When his characters are fighting for their lives, being pushed towards death’s door, or facing a situation that’s seemingly inescapable, along comes the dove to offer a reminder that noble intentions and righteousness will more often than not prevail in the face of insurmountable danger.
It was The Killer that first heralded their arrival as part of his directorial arsenal, and it’s even more evocative of his approach that the staggering final shootout of the film takes place in a church. They’ve become so closely associated with Woo that even the stars of his movies have been known to voice their frustrations when they don’t receive the opportunity to get in on the act.
“Still kind of gutted that I didn’t get any doves,” Silent Night star Joel Kinnaman admitted to Comic Book. “I kept asking John during the shoot; I was like, ‘Where are my doves at? Where my doves at? You know I need my doves!’ But I didn’t get any.” As crushing as that may have been, let’s hope Woo hasn’t abandoned them for good, but it doesn’t truly feel like one of his films unless the audience sees one.
That juxtaposition between peace and violence, hope and despair, and feathers and firearms has remained a staple of his work for over three decades, with the doves doubling down on their symbolic effect as a way to shed further light on his protagonists. “I wanted to figure out a montage or a shot that would somehow reveal their true character,” Woo recalled. “When our hero was shot, I cut to the white doves flying over, and it looked beautiful.”
Having discovered that using them at the right moment would have a greater impact, they became key components of his style, with Woo encapsulating their symbolic meaning relative to his protagonists in microcosm: “These guys have done some bad things in their lives, but their souls got saved in the end.”
