THE GRANDMASTER

While watching The Grandmaster, Wong Kar-Wai's decade in the making martial arts biopic, I couldn't help but think of the films of Bruce Lee, particularly Enter The Dragon. This is partially because Grandmaster's subject, Ip Man (Tony Leung), went on to train Lee, but mostly because of the contrast in how these films handle action.

The photography in Lee's films were joyously overwhelmed by his physicality. The camera often staying far away, emphasizing his whole body moving as one blurry, unstoppable force. But Grandmaster isn't like that. It's approach to Kung Fu is much more intimate. Wong's camera is interested less in the whole and more in the individual pieces of the body and how they relate to each other. He uses many short close-ups of hands and feet moving into position, an impressionistic technique that, in other action pictures, frequently confuses, but here it provides insight because Wong is showing us strategy. It also helps that Wong is one of the most tactile and painterly filmmakers in the world to the point that he frequently uses step printing and other techniques to make it seem like we can actually see paint smearing on the lens of the camera and the film becomes a beautifully choreographed ballet of singing razor blades, rain drops splashing off hats, falling icicles, crumbling cakes and ritualistically lit cigarettes.

While Wong usually eschews traditional narrative to create his thematic mood pieces, a sort of story does emerge: the film follows Ip Man and Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang), two expertly talented Kung Fu masters who find their destinies greatly altered because of the times they live in. The film begins in the early 1930's when it seems that Ip, a rising star, might be able to unite the Northern and Southern schools of Kung Fu. But his refusal to collaborate with the invading Japanese results in him being exiled to Hong Kong where he suffers terrible poverty and hardship. By the time Wong get's to the 1950's, the old guard is mostly gone and no one even knows Ip's name.

Gong Er's battle is even harder, she is the daughter of a northern grandmaster and an expert of her 47 Hand's style, she even beats Ip Man in a wonderfully conceived bout, but because of her gender she will always be denied her place as the shepherd of her fathers legacy. Her father, clearly bitter about the limits society puts on her, is forced to pass off his legacy to someone the community would accept and suggests she try her hand at becoming a doctor.

Though history has vindicated Ip Man (films about him are almost a genre unto themselves at this point), Wong views both these people as being defined by lost destinies. Indeed all the characters in the film seem to struggle living in the shadow of the lives they almost had. Like many Wong films, Grandmaster is ultimately about people in limbo, making the best of who they are and using love as a way to cope with crushing loneliness.

There are two cuts of Grandmaster out there. The original Hong Kong cut is not especially long at 130 minutes, none the less it has been cut down to 108 minutes for the American market. The cuts are noticeable but not fatal. The American cut, which Wong oversaw personally, adds a great deal of intertitles to help explain/rush past the complex plot, and it often feels like there are holes in the narrative. The Hong Kong version handles the exposition much more smoothly and there are more scenes involving the Gong family and more stuff with secondary characters such as Razor (Chen Chang), another exiled master. Strangely though, the American cut also contains a great deal of footage not found in the Hong Kong cut, some of which seemed essential when I saw it last week. Both versions are fantastic and worth your time.

Grade: A-