Is
it a bird, a plane, or a super-kungfu-master? In Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon, based on part four of a five-part
novel by early twentieth-century writer Wang Du Lu, kungfu
fighting is raised to new heights -- literally. The fighters
jump up tall buildings with a few simple bounds and even fight
in the treetops. Just why they fight at all, rather than negotiate,
is a mystery that the director, Ang Lee, presumably wants
filmviewers to solve. The title is a Chinese phrase referring
to a place where mysterious or unsuspected powers lurk. With
English subtitles, the film was made on the China mainland.
The time period is the Qing dynasty. When the movie begins,
Li Mui Bai (played by Chow Yun Fat) wants to abandon the craft
of kungfu, so he decides to surrender his 400-year-old sword
to Sir Le (played by Lung Si Hung), his kungfu master, though
his longtime kungfu companion Yu Shu Lien (played by Michelle
Yeoh), head of the Yuan Security Compound, tries at first
to dissuade him but then agrees to return the sword to Sir
Le for him. When the sword, known as the Green Destiny, is
stolen by a masked intruder, Li pledges to recover the sword.
The intruder, however, is Yu Jen (played by Zhang Zi Yi),
who is betrothed to a fat nerd. Having been trained for a
decade in the art of kungfu by Li’s evil archenemy Jade Fox
(played by Cheng Pei Pei), Jen does not want to marry, so
she takes the sword, heads west for Wudan Mountains after
stealing away from the wedding procession. On the journey,
she vanquishes various male challengers, and ultimately meets
Dark Cloud (played by Chang Chen), who takes her comb. Dark
Cloud, aka Lo, is the leader of a Manchu outlaw gang. In an
effort to retrieve the comb, she follows Dark Cloud, but he
takes her captive. Similar to the plot in Tie Me Up, Tie Me
Down (1990), she falls in love with her captor. However, he
urges her to return to the palace after the two enjoy sex
together, as he can only offer a life on the run. Upon returning
home, she realizes that she can live only with Dark Cloud,
so she again travels west, tussles with Li and Yu for possession
of the sword, but Jade Fox delivers a fatal poison needle
to Li’s neck. Before dying, Li confesses that he has always
loved Yu, but he never dared to say so before, in order not
to dishonor the memory of Yu’s husband, who died in battle
years earlier. When Jen reaches Dark Cloud, who is now in
charge of a palace of his own, she decides to commit suicide.
The director, Ang Lee, whose paternal grandparents were executed
by the Communists because they were landowners, clearly is
eager for us to learn something about China or Chinese culture.
First, we see that conflicts are resolved by stealth and by
force, never by negotiation. Second, women are subordinate,
even when talented; but there is a further nuance, as the
Chinese character for "swordsmanship" is also the character
that means "ultimate woman." Third, honor is more important
than either success or enjoyment, so sexual repression is
sublimated into kungfu mastery. Does Ang Lee want us to understand
that his native Taiwan does not want to become subordinated
to the People’s Republic of China and might even prefer an
honorable bloodbath to an ignominious surrender? Some of the
symbolism might lead to such an inference, but censors in
Beijing did not see any such message. MH
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