This movie
came nine years after 2046, Wong
Kar-wai’s last Chinese film (true, only six years after My Blueberry Nights, but I have a hard time counting that as one of
his.) It was also the first film of his
I saw on the big screen. With all that
behind it, it falls slightly short of my anticipation, and it also feels a bit
un-Wong-like, but it’s still quite something.
One
departure is its basis as a true story: The Grandmaster follows Ip Man, the
expert martial artist who went on to teach Bruce Lee. Not that the film focuses on Lee, instead
exploring Ip’s life before, during, and after WWII. His craft comes of age in the 1930s, when kung
fu in China divides along geographic lines.
Ip is a southern artist, and the film is marked by his encounters with
Gong Er, the daughter of the renowned northern grandmaster. Like all of Wong’s works, the story flows,
river-like, between ideas, rather than following a more traditional three-act
plot.
On the
kung fu front, this movie makes me wish I knew more about it, because I think
I’d find the film much richer if I did.
It contemplates various schools of the art, with some fights set up like
tutorials – half lecture, half demonstration.
As such, the action is fastidiously choreographed to reflect the
particular affiliation of each artist, undoubtedly a feast for any kung fu
enthusiast. (Be warned, this also means
the action can be slow at times, either interrupted by explanations or literally
slowed down to emphasize the craft.)
That said, it’s uniquely gorgeous.
The fighting is by turns educational (Ip’s demonstration of Wing Chun’s
eight kicks,) picturesque (the opening fight in driving rain,) and
emotionally-charged (the climactic scene of Gong fighting beside a train.) It also highlights Wong’s ability to imbue
anything with romance. I don’t just mean
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” romance, though there’s definitely
some of that. I mean a startling sense
of beauty that almost aches, an electricity in the air binding the characters
together through individual paths. Movement,
colors, and music saturate the film, nearly overwhelming in its intimacy. It’s this type of romance that distinguishes
it as a Wong film.
The
story itself, less so. I already
mentioned that it does maintain Wong’s usual meandering structure, but overall,
it feels much more “written” than many of his films. Most of the time, the actual words in Wong’s
movies are a stylistic blend of incredibly precise, everyday-poetic voiceovers
and long scenes of rough-hewn improvised dialogue. Here, the writing feels a lot more
preplanned; the dialogue contains plenty of carefully-formed “golden
phrases.” Don’t get me wrong – it’s lovely,
but it’s not what I expect going into a Wong film, and that means it doesn’t
quite capture my normal experience of watching his movies.
At this
point, it doesn’t quite feel like a Wong movie if Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s not in
it, and he’s superb here as Ip. His
quiet performance is uniformly wonderful, all intent observation and
understated emotion. As Gong, Ziyi Zhang
gives a performance I’ve never seen from her before, very brittle and
controlled, but brimming with unspoken passions that bubble over when
pressed. Chen Chang, who worked with
Leung (and Wong) in Happy Together
and Zhang in Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon, makes a small appearance as a kung fu expert.
Warnings
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