Since yesterday's News Satire Roundup came a day late, I'm also throwing in the A Little TLC(w)-related post I had in the docket for today.
I don’t
know enough about the real Ip Man to know how Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s portrayal
of him compares (knowing Wong Kar-wai, my assumption would be that the artistic
license is pretty broad,) so I can’t talk about this performance from that
standpoint. I can talk about him purely as a character, though, and that’s what
we’re doing today. First, here’s the A
Little TLC(w) addition to my Grandmaster
review. “Recommend? In General
– I would. As a kung fu movie, it’s
fairly slow and artistic, but it’s ultimately a beautiful film with a lot more
richness than is immediately apparent. Tony
Leung Chiu-wai – Yes. This is a
subtle but rewarding performance, and in Leung’s hands, the action scenes look
like music.”
It’s hard
to get too much of a handle on Ip
Man. He isn’t just one thing, and on
first impressions, he can feel pretty muted.
What do we know? We know he’s a
revelatory Wing Chun artist, one who often seems happy enough not to fight someone but who will
willingly oblige when necessary. We know
he’s thoughtful and intelligent, somehow modest and self-assured at the same
time, standing a little bit apart and yet deeply connected, very unassuming but
also kind of magnetic.
How do
you put all that together? One could
easily look at Leung’s understated performance and say there’s not much going
on here, but I find more every time I watch this movie. As you can see from the above paragraph, Ip Man
can elude you a bit; every time you think you have him pinned down, he shows
himself to be the near opposite. Take
the juxtaposition of his humility and confidence. When he’s chosen to fight the Northern
Master, he asks, softly and politely, why he’s been selected when there are so
many others with more experience or acclaim.
He’s not arguing against
taking part in the match exactly – more, he’s just expressing genuine confusion
as to why the others picked him. And
yet, every time you see him fight, he just exudes this air of quiet
confidence. He’s the man, but he knows
it in such a way that he doesn’t have to go around proclaiming it or itching to
prove it. He just gently goes just about
his business, and if you invite him to, he’ll soundly kick your ass with this
balletic, still-waters grace.
It’s
beautiful to watch him fight (as a novice martial artist, Leung looks best in
highly artistic films like this one or Hero,
where it’s more about the camera work and the beauty of the movements than the
technical precision of the moves – he’s never gonna be Donnie Yen or Daniel Wu,
but in this kind of film, he does his job well.) He’s a deeply introspective fighter. In all the action scenes, you can see him
reading his opponent’s every move in his eyes, quietly taking it all in and
putting it together in his mind. Whether
he’s learning from another’s skill, gently amusing himself in demonstrating his
own to someone who doubts it, or taking the sincerest pleasure in meeting his
match, he never feels more him than
when he’s doing kung fu.
Like many
Wong Kar-wai characters (because, as I said, this is very definitely Wong’s version of Ip Man,) he suffers silently
from the choices he doesn’t make. This
character is so still and so quiet, but Leung speaks volumes with
his eyes. Nearly everything between Ip
Man and Gong Er is unspoken, but even if you don’t quite know what’s between
them, it’s wrenching to see them just fall short of reaching one another, to
have their chances come a bit too late.
As in all things, Ip Man doesn’t rage over or lament it – instead,
whatever pain he feels, he carries it, not burying or denying it but not
sinking under it, either. It seems to
sort of seep into him, becoming him but not fully being him.
In
short? For a low-key performance,
there’s a lot going on here, and
Leung tears it up in the subtlest of ways.
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