The Grandmaster

The Grandmaster tells the story of influential kung fu master Ip Man.  Ip Man won renown in pre-Invasion China, suffered through the Japanese occupation, and eventually made his way to Hong Kong, where he taught a young Bruce Lee.  His is a fascinating story, told well in the film Ip Man, starring Donnie Yen.

This telling, starring Tony Leung and directed by Wong Kar Wai, misfires.  This surprised me, as Tony Leung (Chiu Wai – there’s also a Tony Leung Kai Fung, who was terrific in DetectiveDee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame) and Wong Kar Wai have, in the past, worked together to make remarkable, moving, and memorable films such as Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love, and 2046.

The problem is that The Grandmaster, a kung-fu biography, is better suited to the directorial talents of a Zhang Yimou or Yuen Woo-ping.  Filmed kung fu is dance: extensively choreographed, intensively practiced, and performed by people with years of training.  When photographed in medium- to long takes, it’s one of the most beautiful things one can see onscreen.  While Leung is entirely capable of performing in such takes (see Jet Li’s magnificent Hero), Wai chooses to shoot and edit his battles in a kinetic, quick-cut style of the sort one uses to hide that fact that one’s star doesn’t actually know what he’s doing.

This short changes Leung, as well as the stuntmen and dancers with whom he performs Ip Man’s contests, and draws the viewer out of the film.  Once drawn out, one begins to notice Wai’s other stylistic choices, such as snap closeups to direct the audience’s eye (rather than trusting the audience to notice important elements for themselves) and a frenetic editing style at odds with the calm and self-possession of the film’s title character.

I’m sorry to find this film so disappointing, as I have great respect for Wai, Leung, and co-stars Zhang Ziyi and Chen Chang.  Nevertheless, Wai and Leung have created enough wonderful films that I’m happy to give this one a pass.  Though The Grandmaster disappointed me, I look forward to their next collaboration.

Three Times

THREE TIMES, directed by Hsiao-hsien Hou and starring Qi Shu and Chen Chang, is supposed to be a briliant movie. It won a Golden Horse for Best Taiwanese Film of the Year and was nominated for a Golden Palm, so it has some serious bona fides, but those bona fides didn't translate into a movie I could engage or enjoy. I suspect it's because THREE TIMES is too Chinese - it's so deeply embedded in Chinese themes and concerns that there isn't much there for the Occidental viewer.

THREE TIMES consists of three short stories, each a play on the theme of love missed. The first, set in the mid-'60s, casts Qi as a pool hall attendant and Chen as a soldier who falls in love with her, only to miss the connection in the end. In the second, Qi plays a courtesan and Chen a wealthy patron, one who always speaks of freeing China from foreign domination while blithely allowing the young woman to remain in servitude at the bordello. In the third, the two play a couple in modern Taipei, so thoroughly engrossed in their own personal worlds that they're incapable of reaching out to another human being.

These sound like interesting premises, but they depend upon an understanding of nonverbal communication and social cues that, in turn, require a deep familiarity with the culture on which they're based. The second story, for example, is a silent movie: its dialogue consisting of intertitle cards and the only sounds are that of the of the courtesan's sad songs. The sad songs are Chinese traditionals, done in the scaling, high, nearly nasal tone that was fashionable at that time, and which grates on my ears today. As for the first and third stories, they depend upon an understanding of the culture and history of Taiwan - one which I, as a viewer lacking in that knowledge, couldn't deliver.

If you're Chinese, you may love the heck out of THREE TIMES. For me, it didn't deliver.