| Schmaltz | 8 |
| Violence | 9 |
| Romance | 8 |
| Nudity and Sex | 2 |
| Plot | 9 |
| Buckets o' Blood | 4 |
| Terror | 2 |
Link in the Internet movie database
Synopsis: Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat, who's aged very gracefully) is a hero's hero in ancient China; and many times has he raised his sword (the Green Destiny, because y'know, it just isn't easy being green) against foe and threat in defense of his homeland. The sly fox is also dearly in love with Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh and good God, who wouldn't be?), his childhood friend who returns the feelings, though both have been fairly coy about their emotions. As... all martial arts heroes are. Is this sort of emotional retardation like a requirement of learning the ancient arts? I don't know. I just... don't know.
Anyhoo, Li Mu Bai has recently been meditating on the mountain (because that's what you do when you're not hewing your enemies limb from limb when you're a student of the martial arts) when he discovered a great emptiness within himself. Rather troubled by this, his immediate response is to give up the Green Destiny and renounce his warrior ways, likely so that he can trade on his once celebrity status and open up a chain of highly successful if overpriced coffee shops called Baibucks. He asks his friend Shu to deliver the weapon to Sir Te, an aged defender of the common good, whom he feels most deserves the sword. Shu, who's head of the Boot-To-The-Head Consolidated Parcel Delivery Service agrees to perform this service and will meet Li there, at Te's humble abode. However, that night, a thief steals the Green Destiny and makes her escape with it, much to the chagrin of absolutely everyone. Li, Shu and others of the cast strike out to recover the weapon; however, we discover that this is not so simple a story as we may first believe. Also, it seems that destinies begin to change and shift depending upon who's holding the sword...
Commentary: I really wish that I could give a better synopsis than the one shown above; but unfortunately the movie's so tightly bound into a complex plot that I'd have to spoiler just about every aspect of it to get my meaning across. Even the commentary is going to take a lot of work to finesse without giving away important plot elements. Thus, I'm going to divide up my thoughts into the following four categories:
Visuals/Choreography
The only way to describe these is... 'guh'.
There's a quiet beauty to this film that transcends breathlessness. The combatants often glide through the air on their wires, gliding silently through the dark like ethereal ghosts for whom gravity is only a 'good idea'. I've seen much Wire-Fu in the past -- most of it caught at 2 in the morning, along with bad dub jobs and incomprehensible plots -- and in all of those, the wire-flights tended to distract rather greatly from my own suspension (sic) of disbelief. Not so in this film. You know.... you know that the actors are all birds on the wire, but for the love of all that's holy, you don't care. If you're a fan of the anime show Ranma 1/2, this is about as close as visual effects will ever get to their amazing martial arts. Wire-fu does have a place in this movie medium, it seems; while CGI tricks will create realism, wires can create beauty. The beauty comes from how divorced from reality the visuals are; when done wrong they look like actors being suspended from their under-pants, but when done right, they look like something Beyond us.
Blech. Enough rambling and waxing confusingly poetic about wires.
Most of the people heading to this film will be coming looking for... the fighting. And believe you me, they won't be disappointed. The puncha in this movie is phenomenal and well distributed through the film; further, there's a decent amount of situational comedy in the fights to lighten the movie's tone somewhat -- something that it does occasionally need.
One of the nicest things about the fight scenes in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is that each fighter has a very clear fighting style that they use throughout the movie. While they may change off weapons or go bare-handed, the fighters tend to retain the same footwork, moves and tactics from punch-fest to punch-fest. Fighting is another place where the protagonists appear so far beyond us normal plebes as to be untouchable; when they fight, there's no cautious probing give-or-take seen in most fencing matches in life or TV, but an all out clash of arms that moves almost faster than the eye can follow. The only way to watch a fight in this film is to simply let your attention drift with the waves of motion and attempt to zen your way through. These are not normal people attacking one another. These are bundles of training and talent clashing at speeds beyond the normal human ken. This leads to a very nice trope indeed: you can tell when one combatant is being condescending to another by lapsing into a much slower, easier to follow style. There is as much poetry and plot to the fights as there is to the dialogue.
Plot
In a word, the plot is amazing. It never truly confuses the watchful viewer while introducing a tangled weave of revenges, promises, pledges and duties that ultimately come together at the movie's final act. The film gives equal time to all of its characters, including the supposed antagonist. What this does is prevents us the viewers from really finding any true Good vs Bad in this film... instead, it's about a more complex clash than the sort Western movies care to illustrate. There's a very long (about half an hour) flashback sub-plot which appears halfway through the film -- this might well confuse some of the more casual viewers, but for me it was a perfect break from the film's plot and a wonderful way to understand the motivations of Jen Yu, the maiden who steals Li's sword.
Flubs
There aren't many flubs in this film. In fact, there are only three that I found mildly annoying.
The first is that one of the secondary characters (either Lo or Bo... I'm not sure which) bears a striking similarity to our hero, Chow. I did go for a few minutes thinking that Li was in two places at once before I realised that there was this strange similarity. The way to tell the difference between Chow and Bo (or Lo?) is that Bo (or Lo?)'s head is immense enough to sustain its own gravity well. So Says Master Po.
The second flub is that there's a sub-plot involving our Gravity-Well Head running up with a fellow hunting the Jade Fox (a female martial artist who's pivotal to this film). He's accompanied by his daughter on this hunt. Once the fellow dies, both Gravity-Well Head and the daughter vanish out of the script, which is a touch jarring. I would have liked a little closure on that.
Finally, there's a breathtaking fight Up A Tree. It's a beautiful example of Wire-Fu... except during one exchange, it looks like Li wins the fight because he's cut the other's wire. Oops...
Ending
SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!
So, what struck me about this movie -- and its rather depressing ending -- is that for once, the movie's message isn't 'do your duty or you'll die horribly'.
To me, the ending of the movie suggests that failing to be true to yourself will lead to a terrible end.
Li spends the beginning of the film trying to fill a hole in his life. The hole is, in my opinion only, not peace but the love of his partner, Shu. In giving up his sword, however, he has managed to hide his need both from himself and from Shu. He has also denigrated what he is, which is a hero-warrior, and thus marked himself as untrue to everything that he is. It is the giving away of his sword which sets things in motion; and ultimately, it is this giving away of his sword that brings about Li's death. Fortunately, in death Li is more true to himself than in life -- he dies complete, rather than 'by his training' as Shu unwisely advises him.
Shu is fairly true to herself. She keeps mum about her feelings for Li to an extent, but her feelings are written so plainly on her face that even Sir Te can read them straight off of her beautiful, gorgeous, wonderful (er, sorry, moving on) face. She is almost incapable of being untrue to herself by nature; when she does, she betrays her feelings. In a sick sense, this is why she gets to live.
Jen Yu (the noble thief) is a mass of inner conflict. She is caught in a triad of being a noble, a desert ruffian's lover and a martial artist. Jen lies to each of the roles that she tries to fill, hiding behind masks or untruths rather than choosing one to embrace. That she dies by her own hand shows how she's brought about her own demise on her own -- the ring of roles has slipped about her neck and strangled the life from her.
The Jade Fox is a sad, sad character indeed. She lies to herself about her prowess, her motivations and everything important to her. She is the hub around which the other characters revolve; when her hubris lays her low, it sets in motion the final fates of the other main characters.
END SPOILERS!!!
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