| CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON Director: Ang Lee "The film language of martial arts has excited me for a long time. The form and genre as a story- telling devise is a fantastic one for me, and the martial arts is really the extension of the characters and their relationships. Unless I felt I was using it as film language, instead of being totally sucked into the genre, I probably wouldn’t have done this film. Also,the film is about a restrained and repressed culture. The people are very repressed, yet they’re fully expressing themselves through body language in a fight - so in that sense it’s not that far away from Sense and Sensibility.” Ang Lee With Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Ang Lee proves himself to be one of the most versatile directors working anywhere in the world today. At once an epic love story and an over the top martial arts film it’s a riff on many of the greatest Chinese myths and, for my money, the most entertaining film of the year. Both in its thrilling action sequences and its melodramatic elements, that favor woman characters over men, Crouching Tiger is similar to many such period drama Hong Kong films from the last 25 years including Peking Opera Blues (Women in central role and cross dressing) and Iron Monkey (gravity defying rooftop fighting). The plot is so rife with convoluted elements that it’s tricky to summarize. But basically, an itinerant swordman Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun Fat) arrives in a small province to visit his longtime friend Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) and to give his sword (The Green Destiny) to a respected leader in the area. The sword stays around for one night and then a thief, who has been recruited by an evil witch woman named Jade Fox (Cheng Pei Pei), steals it. At this point a beautiful but headstrong young woman named Jen Yu (Zhang Ziyi) is introduced. It turns out she has astonishing martial arts skills and she insists on learning as much as she can -- but she is torn between the good intentions of Yu Shu Lien and the evil ones of Jade Fox. In a lengthy revealing flashback we learn that Jen -- who is a woman born of privilege and wealth -- has fallen in love with Lo (Chang Chen) a scruffy but heroic young man who, once upon a time, rescued Jen from dying in the desert. During this sequence the film slows down and develops a passionate romance between two young lovers. There is a lot of background developed to show that each of the characters have strong memories, long lasting grudges and unrequited love that go way back in time. What ensues thereafter are feuds, gravity defying battles with surprisingly little bloodshed, one revealing flashback, tears of joy and sadness, a good number of bruises to bodies and egos and an enigmatic ending that can only be called transcendental. The fight scenes have such an amazing exhilarating quality that many won’t want them to end. For this reason, the marketing hype of the movie’s action sequences almost undermines the more contemplative moments. Even though there are a good number of action scenes that are more agile, graceful and breathtaking than anything released this year they don’t dominate the movie. If anything, they are the exception rather than the rule. For the hyper-real action scenes Lee recruited the services of Yuen Wo-Ping, who has worked on many Hong Kong martial arts films and who lent his expert hand to the fight scenes in The Matrix, to choreograph the action sequences. In the half dozen or so fight scenes characters run along walls, bound across rooftops and seem to fly through the air. One amazing sequence in particular has Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh fighting the enemy literally in the tree tops on bending and lilting branches. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon not only kicks butt and has some of the most breathtaking cinematography but it also has enough heartfelt reflection that, unlike every other action film I can think of, can bring tears to your eyes. - Matt Langdon |