I fucking love Wong Kar Wai. I still remember vividly the first time I saw his transcendant film IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, my feet left the ground and my mind was taken to places I've been before and to places by body will never go. Even after several viewings, the movie still has a powerful effect on me. I found things to love about all of his movies, even MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS, which I thought was sassy and colourful. All, but THE GRANDMASTER, unfortunately. It's not a bad movie per se, but it's dry of the Wong Kar Wai magic we pay movie ticket money for. I do not, for the love of me, understand the reason of being behind this film. Or maybe I don't want to confront it?
Ip Man (Tony Leung) is a legendary Kung Fu practicioner. His resume is quite impressive: he brought the Wing Chun style to mainstream popularity and brought up a certain Jun Fan Lee into martial arts. THE GRANDMASTER is a romanticized biopic that covers about two decades of his life. It goes from the school rivalries where Ip Man demonstrated the superiority on Wing Chun to his exile in Hong Kong because of the Japanese education. Of course, since it's a Wong Kar Wai movie, there is an overarching love story and it's the best damned thing the film. I don't mind it, it's why we love the man. For giving our blue feelings some sort of credibility for two hours. Ip Man falls madly in love with Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi), the daughter of a rival sifu, holder of a secret, deadly Kung Fu style called ''the 64 hands''.
OK, first, the aesthetic complaints. THE GRANDMASTER is visually monotone by Wong Kar Wai's standards. Several movies use the orange and teal contrasts to create an edgy visual aspect. It's a technique so abused that it became a cliché. THE GRANDMASTER is all about oranges and blacks. I understand when you're outside, lampposts will make everything orange and black. But the colours are also used indoors! It becomes mind-numbing at some point. It's not before Zhang Ziyi's character that you get stmulation and at this point, there's about twenty minutes left to the movie.
Also, I didn't quite get why Wong Kar Wai was interested in making Kung Fu film. His range of interest always seemed more universal : love, melacholia, intimate despair in the wee hours of the morning. I mean, why Kung Fu all of a sudden? There is beauty to the art. It's all about precision and gracefulness. It becomes evident quite soon that Wong Kar Wai has no idea how to film it, though. The editing cuts are impatient, cut the moves in half and all that's left for are flying fists and flying bodies. Even during the sensual duel between Ip Man and Gong Er, the hyperactive camera ruins the moment. Wong Kar Wai has always been a director of slowness and desire and there is very little of that in THE GRANDMASTER, except maybe for the first scene in the rain (which is arguably the selling point of this film). Movies by lesser directors like HERO and CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON transmit the beauty of the art better and I'm not a far of these movies.
Even if it was for the briefest moment, Zhang Ziyi saved the day again. Well, somewhat.
Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of THE GRANDMASTER was all the propaganda it vehicled. It's very nationalistic. To a point it gets ridiculous. The virtuous chinese people don't grow old. Technically, Ip Man is about 60 years old at the end of the story and he doesn't look a day older than when the story started. Same thing for Gong Er. The only Chinese person who aged is Ma San (Jin Zhang) who betrayed his country and joined the occupying forces. I didn't get the Kung Fu propaganda either. The landscape of martial arts is changing fast in this decade and China is catching up. I didn't see the point of romanticizing traditional Kung Fu again as the limits of this martial art have been exposed several times over in the last fifteen years. The Chinese themselves have developped Wushu and San Shou since then, styles with better efficiency than Wing Chun. Bruce Lee himself debunked some of the myths carried by THE GRANDMASTER in the sixties and created Jeet Kune Do. I'm aware it's kind of a niche complaint, but the arrogance with which it was done bugged the hell out of me.
Really, Josie and I paid for the last twenty minutes, which looked slightly more like a Wong Kar Wai movie and for the fat kid sitting beside us, doing Kung Fu katas while watching the film. He was maybe 12-13 years old and seemed to have gotten his money's worth with THE GRANDMASTER. I walked out not understanding why this movie was made. I applaude Wong Kar Wai's effort for getting out of his comfort zone, but it's a movie that would have been decent a decade ago. THE GRANDMASTER is monochrome, redundant, uninspired and ill-intentioned. It breaks my heart to say it as I'm the biggest Wong Kar Wai fan there is, but skip this one. Even the greatest filmmakers are allowed to be wrong and THE GRANDMASTER is wrong just about everything.