Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Review #1525: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Cast: 
Chow Yun-fat (Li Mu Bai), Michelle Yeoh (Yu Shu Lien), Zhang Ziyi (Jen Yu), Chang Chen (Lo 'Dark Cloud' / Luo Xiao Hu), Cheng Pei-pei (Jade Fox), Sihung Lung (Sir Te), Li Fazeng (Governor Yu), Gao Xi'an (Bo), Hai Yan (Madam Yu), and Wang Deming (Police inspector Tsai / Prefect Cai Qiu) Directed by Ang Lee.

Review: 
"Nothing stands still. That's important in my movies. People want to believe in something, want to hang on to something to get security and want to trust each other. But things change. Given enough time, nothing stands still. I think seeking for security and lack of security is another thing in my movies."

It always helps to broaden your horizons when it comes to movies. Ang Lee cultivated a place for himself as a respected international director through a long road from his birth in Taiwan to studying at both the National Taiwan University of Arts and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His studies at each resulted in an interest for drama and arts (with a degree in theater to show for it at the latter), and study at New York University Tisch School of the Arts carried him into film (including an acclaimed thesis film). Despite all of this work in school, it took several years for him to find work in the film industry (where he wrote ideas and screenplays while being a house husband). He was given a chance to write and direct after submitting his work for a competition by the Government Information Office of Taiwan. The result was the martial arts comedy-drama Pushing Hands (1991), a Taiwan-United States production which he would direct and co-write. This was the first of six films he would do in the 1990s, which generally received positive notices from critics and fair audience returns with work such as The Wedding Banquet (1993, which finished second in the submission contest) and Sense and Sensibility (1995).

You don't need me to tell you that this was a great international success, because it most definitely made an impression on audiences in 2000, with over half of its $213 million box office earnings coming in America, resulting in it being known as the most successful non-English language film produced abroad in America (alongside numerous accolades, including an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film). This was a massive co-production that needed four countries and multiple production companies that ranged from Taiwanese Zoom Hunt International Productions Company to China Film Co-Production Corporation to EDKO Film (Hong Kong) to Sony Pictures Classics. This was adapted from the novel of the same name by Wang Dulu, who had written it as the fourth in his five-novel Crane-Iron Series (which were serialized from 1938 to 1944) for which Kuo Jung Tsai, Hui-Ling Wang and James Schamus (involved in Lee's films as writer or producer since Lee's first) were tasked to write a screenplay of. Lee had wanted to make a film like this ever since he was a child, and he had read the story in 1994 and was grabbed by the lead character of Jen and her story alongside its abundance of Chinese history and textures. Each country has their own cinema for which to hang their laurels on, but the wuxia genre (which translates to martial heroes) is very much tied to Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong in entertainment.

The diversity of accomplishment in such a production also serves to the cast, which has a majority of its main actors born from those three countries for a Mandarin language film (Yeoh was born in Malaysia and had to train for a year to learn Mandarin). Lee pitched the film to Yeoh as "Sense and Sensibility with martial arts", and it would seem each are perfect for each other in the film. What we have here is a fairly poetic movie in its sensibility that Lee wanted to present (in his own words) as "China of the imagination" that makes for a film of hidden strengths in its mix of Eastern and Western filmmaking that certainly makes for a fascinating experience of destiny and art. Hong Kong film icon Chow does a tremendous job here, having a great composure of integrity and stature that we see quite well in interest without needing platitudes to speak through. Yeoh (also a Hong Kong icon within action) has clearly worked just as hard in fitting with what is needed in strength and conviction in an role bound by loyalty and regret that is terrific. Zhang (a model-turned-actress in her third role at age 20) does wonders in wandering vulnerability that weaves in desire and arrogance with useful spirit that matters in generating meaningful drama between her and Yeoh in the differences that shape them in their lives and what they share in their obligations to society. Chang proves just as reliable in brimming charisma that go well enough when paired with Zhang. Cheng pulls in a soothingly bitter turn as the last main focus, doing well with her little story of counter reactiveness to her own history of repressed desires with others.

The diversity of accomplishment in such a production also serves to the cast, which has a majority of its main actors born from those three countries for a Mandarin language film (Yeoh was born in Malaysia and had to train for a year to learn Mandarin). Lee pitched the film to Yeoh as "Sense and Sensibility with martial arts", and it would seem each are perfect for each other in the film. What we have here is a fairly poetic movie in its sensibility that Lee wanted to present (in his own words) as "China of the imagination" that makes for a film of hidden strengths in its mix of Eastern and Western filmmaking that certainly makes for a fascinating experience of destiny and art. Hong Kong film icon Chow does a tremendous job here, having a great composure of integrity and stature that we see quite well in interest without needing platitudes to speak through. Yeoh (also a Hong Kong icon within action) has clearly worked just as hard in fitting with what is needed in strength and conviction in an role bound by loyalty and regret that is terrific. Zhang (a model-turned-actress in her third role at age 20) does wonders in wandering vulnerability that weaves in desire and arrogance with useful spirit that matters in generating meaningful drama between her and Yeoh in the differences that shape them in their lives and what they share in their obligations to society. Chang proves just as reliable in brimming charisma that go well enough when paired with Zhang. Cheng pulls in a soothingly bitter turn as the last main focus, doing well with her little story of counter reactiveness to her own history of repressed desires with others.

Any film that could have a fight high up into the trees and not seem reliant on CGI or tricks is clearly on the right track for greatness. Great hands of fighting need great choreographers, so enter Yuen Woo-ping, who is known for his direction as fight advisor and his own films since the 1970s that shifted from primarily working in Hong Kong (such as Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in 1978) to work in Hollywood with films such as The Matrix (1999); coincidentally, he would direct the sequel to this film sixteen years later (with Sword of Destiny adapting the fifth book). Its best sequence is likely the scene in the restaurant, one that showcases a display of fury against a whole group with great focus and action. It proves more than a martial arts film made to express a childhood goal, accomplishing a sweeping epic in what one sees and feels with its story that make its fights in the air all the more worthwhile to go along the rest. However one interprets its ending in where it leaps to close out a tale of poetry, it makes for a satisfactory closure of the circle that works in delivering tragedy on the scale of an epic without becoming bogged down in scope. With a pace of two hours, the film shuffles itself along with great air for engaging entertainment through a suitable cast, sweeping fights and music (through Tan Dun and occasional cello work from accomplished cellist Yo-Yo Ma), and an awareness for what makes a great epic come through with focus.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.