crouchingtiger

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was the surprise hit of 2000, without much question. The film, directed by Ang Lee, is a Chinese production (in Mandarin with subtitles), and the performers, naturally, are Chinese and are not exactly household names, although I suppose Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh have some weight with certain movie goers in North America. Despite such obstacles, the film managed to make more than 100 million dollars in the North American box office, and win four Academy Awards.

The story is good in that sweeping fantasy epic kind of way - I'm not well versed in such fantastical things, but certainly the plot sounds very much like a legend, from far away and far into the past. Chow Yun-Fat is about to "retire" from the warrior life, and the big act which signifies his intent is his plan to give his sword away to an elder mentor of his. He talks about this to Michelle Yeoh, his partner during their times of war and battle, and as he talks about how he can now relax, while Yeoh looks on rather adoringly, the first thing creeping into my mind was that, of course, these two secretly love each other, and now they can reveal it, now that the fighting days are long behind them.

Yeoh takes the sword to the old man, whose house already has another visitor, a young woman (Zhang Ziyi), daughter of a very important individual (don't quite remember what sort of guy he was, actually), who is about to be forced into an arranged marriage. That night, a mysterious woman (well, actually, she's not all that mysterious) breaks into the house and steals the sword. People start guessing that the culprit is the Jade Fox, one of Yun-Fat's old enemies, because she killed one of his old mentors. In actually, as both I and Yeoh guessed really quickly, the culprit is the young woman herself, and eventually it is revealed that the woman is in a shaky alliance with the Jade Fox. And as a side note, Yun-Fat regains his fighting spirit, now that he knows that he may finally be able to avenge his friend's death.

Ziyi's character is not really all that bad, however - her theft of the sword was her way of getting involved in some sort of adventure, however trivial. She truly desires some sort of freedom, some way to distract herself from the constrictive lifestyle she is forced to lead, signified by her arranged marriage. For years, she's followed the documented exploits of the other two lead characters, unknowing of the fabrications and exaggerations of those exploits - she's enamoured by the fantasy, not the reality. As well, just as the two main characters have denied their love of each other, Ziyi's character has been forced to deny her true love -- to an impoverished, vagabond leader of bandits. In flashback, we see their strange courtship; her family is robbed by the bandits, she chases down the leader, and the leader sort of kidnaps her before the two fall in love. Of course, they were seperated by the usual class and circumstances stuff, and, now, the man has returned, hoping to win back her love.

The two main women, played by Yeah and Ziyi, are what keep the movie interesting. As far as I'm concerned , they're the only ones who can really past muster in the warrior department. Sure, Chow Yun-Fat is top-billed, but half of the time he just stands there with one hand behind his back and the other hand, holding the sword, swishing around. He tries to look all noble and such, while the women do all the work, which is okay by me, because the women are better anyway! And Zhang Ziyi is such a cute chick; a cute chick with great ability - sounds fine to me!

The battle scenes are the highpoint, but they are pretty strange. All of these characters can fly, for some inexplicable reason. At the very least, they are very, very light on their feet. This creates scenes of battle which really aren't very tense (there is very little bloodshed, and people can't really move like that), but are poetic in their own ways. At the start of the movie, Yeah and Ziyi (in disguise) walk up and down walls, and the way they move, for the most part, looks quite natural, even if it does defy the laws of gravity. Other intriguing shots include Ziyi's and Yun-Fat's battle atop some very flimsy looking trees, and Ziyi's barroom brawl with dozens of macho men. There are a few points where the characters seem to actually be able to fly (I'm thinking mostly of the portion of the battle between Ziyi and Yun-Fat before they climb the trees, where they jump unbelievable lengths, even for this movie), and this is generally pretty weird, but this ability does pay off cinematically, in the very final scene, in which that very strange ability leads itself in to a poetic closing image. For the most part, the imagery does not look cheesy, although I'm still at a loss to explain why Lee made it possible for these characters to do these things. The movie does not supply any answers, such as whether some form of mysticism is involved, or whether such gravity-defying can just come naturally. If Lee based this story on any particular source material, no doubt those sources could provide you with some answers.

The film was criticized by some Asian critics for being too "Western". There can be some justification to this remark, as director Ang Lee had worked on many English films previously, including Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, and Ride with the Devil. He was already a Hollywood player when he made this film, and it does show, to a certain degree. The film has a feel of a big blockbuster (although nowhere near as lame as actual Hollywood blockbusters), except that everybody speaks Mandarin, and the story takes place in ancient China. The story itself has an epic feel much like that of Star Wars or other fantasy epics; it is ultimately a simple story of loyalty, love and good vs. evil. The action itself is pretty clean-cut (the film flopped in Hong Kong, where bloody action pictures are the norm). And, most notably, the women take centre stage, which would seem pretty unlikely if this were a true vision of Chinese life, but then Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon isn't exactly Raise the Red Lantern. There is some irony in the fact that this film, while a hit in North America and other places, flopped back in Asia -- obviously, Lee was thinking of the whole world, and of all the tricks and lessons learned in Hollywood, when he made this film.

In any case, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is still a classy adventure picture, with some interesting scenes and a sense of wonder. If you are looking for a nice fantasy/adventure story, without a lot of violence or other troubling scenes, this movie will do the trick.

Rating: ***

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