The Grandmaster (2013, PG-13)

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

Tons of sumptuous kung fu action, some smoking, brief drug use, and a little swearing.