El gran maestro

THIS IS A REVIEW OF THE INTERNATIONAL CUT, NOT THE 'HARVEY WEINSTEIN' American VERSION:

It was finally time for the great iconoclastic Hong Kong director to turn to martial arts in his intense and atmospheric telling of the great grandmaster teacher, Ip man, and he doesn't disappoint.

Wong Kar-wai brings the poetic beauty of his "In the Mood for Love" to this Chinese action genre and executes it with a precise rhythmic heightening reminiscent of Sam Peckinpah at his best, while bringing out the experience of living through the Japanese invasion of China during WWII.

The cast is magnificent, especially Tony Leung as the Ip man and Ziyi Zhang as Gong Er who perfectly embodies a kung-fu mistress trying to avenge her father.

A Wong masterpiece to put on a level with his finest work!

PS: One particular reviewer earlier criticized the editing of this film which, to me, smacks of putting down the film for not being more conventional. Sometimes it is difficult to put aside expectations of what one wants a film to be in favor of what the actual film on the screen is. "The Grandmaster" is, in fact, brilliantly edited. Wong is, if nothing else, a perfectionist in taking years to mold his assembled footage into his own personal rhythmic poem, idiosyncratically emphasizing downbeats and rests as precise as a great composer. What you see here is Wong Kar-wai's personal vision, take it or leave it. I wouldn't change a frame, or a single edit. It strikes me as a perfect diamond by this exceptional, if eccentric, cinema artist.

This film tells the biography of a martial arts master, whose life is interrupted by love and war.

"The Grandmaster" starts off very visually stunning, as Tony Leung and the adversaries fight in the rain in an epic style. The water movement is so stylish that the expectation I have for "The Grandmaster" is immediately lifted up. Throughout the film, the sets are lavish and the visuals are consistently captivating. However, I find the plot a bit confusing and the pace far too slow. The romantic subplot feels cumbersome and too restrained, even though I understand that is the intention to parallel Gong's unspoken feelings. I find the story boring as a matter of fact. Tighter editing, and maybe the last half an hour cut would make the story less cumbersome.

When Wong Kar Wai announced he will start to make a movie about Ip Man, a few followed, all made and shown with success before Wong complete his. Knowing that a WKW movie is never straightforward story-telling, I know his will be different from all others but wonder how different will it be compared to his "Ashes of Time". I will not write anything about the story or the script as I believe it will take some joy away from anyone who is going to watch it. I watched the original first released version. I am dumbfounded, especially with Zhang Ziyi(Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Memoirs of a Geisha, 2046)and Tony Leung's action. They are not Jet Li or Michelle Yeoh but in this movie, they fought so convincingly well that you will think they really know Wing Chun(a type of Chinese Kung-fu). For those who find Wong Kar Wai's past movies too stylish, artistic or difficult to understand, this one is different and most suitable for the general audience but without lacking in style or arts. If there is any complaint, it will be from fans of Tony Leung who may feel that he is overshadowed by Zhang, especially in the action scenes. Just like her Crouching Tiger movie, I believe she acted so well, so much so that the director kept more of her scenes for the final movie.(She is nominated for best actress in the coming China-equivalent of the Oscar). Never have I seen any movie in the past where an actress did so well in both action and drama scenes in the same film. Another actor deserved a mention is Taiwanese Zhang Chen; he is equally as compelling as Zhang in both action and drama here although his screen time is short. Tony Leung did not give me any surprise aside from the action scenes. As for the cinematography, editing and the rest, I think others have already raved enough. Go watch it before reading too much. This is what I call a real movie. It's meant to be seen, not read.

Surely, this is a compromised film. Years in the making, and has one foot in the blockbuster league which means it has to address a wide audience, satisfy investors and make a healthy recoup—in the Chinese market, it did. What both these mean is that Kar Wai had to set up artificial limits to his vision, then swim to real ones, limits he cares to meet as an artist, then see how swiftly he can move back and forth.

But let's not mince words here. Kar Wai is a cinematic master. And I'm sure I will remember this as one of the most interesting, most wonderful, most visual films of the year come December.

Right off the bat, you should know that if you want the clean, rousing version of Ip Man you should go to the Donnie Yen films. It's a legend anyhow, most martial arts stories are (especially the Chinese), embellished in the telling. So if you want 'truth', you're looking in the wrong place to begin with. About Ip Man, you should know that the fighting style he is supposed to have originated called wing chun, at least as taught now, takes some old Taoist notions about softness and intuited flow and creates a uselessly complicated and scholastic system of study.

But the notions are powerful, and this is likely what attracted Kar Wai to a film about him.

So the artificial limits here are the kung fu movie, a type of narrative deeply embedded in the national character. So we get familiar history as the backdrop, Civil War, Japanese invasion and so forth. The film will be familiarly lush and operatic for the Chinese. It also means we get fights, we do—some marvelous ones. It means we get the heroic portrait—the good vs evil sifus, tied to contrasted history, tied to the passing of tradition. The kungfu plot revolves around preserving the secret 64 moves and avenging the old master's death, usual tropes in this type of film.

But he sets all this up in order to break it, that's what Ip Man's talk about breaking the cake represents in his standoff with the old master of the northern school, contrasted to his belief that it should be whole—metaphorically referring to a strong, unified China, the same obsession with fabricated harmony that powers both the political and martial arts narratives over there.

This is what Kar Wai does, he breaks the harmonies.

Not so much in the fights: Kar Wai plays with them like a master painter fools with paint in commissioned work. He plays with speeds, textures and choreographed impacts but does not radically push the language like he did in Ashes. Ashes really was a radical break in temporal experience, wonderful stuff with many layers. Here, we experience fights cleanly, in a way that will satisfy the broad audience.

He breaks the heroic narrative: in his worldview, time does not linearly build to the 'big fight', it happens with one third of the film to go and Ip Man is not in it, what should have been a dramatic death happens offscreen, history is glimpsed off the streets, we get flashbacks and forwards, abstraction and long visual poetry. And the 64 moves are never passed on. All that fooling with structure is a way of loosening limits of genre and tradition, inherited limits to vision.

But what is really worth it here, is watch him swim to meet his own limits—multilayered reflection on memory as living space for the eye.

In martial arts terms, that means soft, yielding to inner pull, to the hardness of fights, politics and quasi-mythical narrative. It means every hard narrative thrust in the name of tradition, country or lineage, becomes an anchor he uses to submerge me in visual exploration of feelings. In visitation of spaces of desire, flows. Sure, it is not as successful as previous projects, because the fancy fights and exotic settings get in the way, jarring me from a tangible experience. But it's still pretty much the same wonderful swimming, each thrust of the hand creating turbulent patterns in water.

For instance, the daughter waiting in the train station to avenge the old master is the anchor. But between that first shot and the decisive encounter, we get a wonderful current of images; cooking smoke at night, snow, refracted light through windows, children running. These are not of the story, but snow flakes of remembrance the air drags in. The cut from statues of Buddha to grainy footage of bustling Hong Kong is one of the most thunderous edits I've seen. And the entire last third of the film is purely a Kar Wai film; all about unrequited yearnings, ashes of youth in a gilded box.

So spliced inside the kung fu comic-book is a sort of Mood for Love where again we had the contrast to 'hard' fabrication in the writer of kung fu stories.

It is muddled, because you can't have crispness when the whole point is a fluid recall. Tarkovsky is 'muddled'. But it's so lovely overall.

The coveted moves as the excuse for the man and woman to meet attempting touch, the Taoist pushing and yielding of hands to be close.

They are empty hand forms, in that there is nothing to be grasped beyond the shared flow. It is all about cultivating sensitivity, listening, placement in space.

'THE GRANDMASTER': Three and a Half Stars (Out of Five)

Critically acclaimed Kung Fu epic about legendary Chinese martial-arts master Ip Man. Ip Man was the Wing Chun grandmaster and his most famous student was Bruce Lee. This film chronicles the years leading up to his success as a martial arts teacher. It stars Tony Leung Chiu-Wai as Ip Man and Zhang Ziyi as Gong Er, his main love interest. Kar Wai Wong directed and co-wrote the movie (with Jingzhi Zou and Haofeng Xu). Wong is famous for directing and writing other popular Hong Kong period piece dramas like '2046' and 'IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE'. I'd rate this flick about the same as Wong's others; I thought it was extremely beautiful to look at but it's also a tad too hard to follow and uninvolving.

The story focuses as much on Gong Er (Ziyi) as it does Ip Man and follows a love story between the two as they keep in contact for many years following a fight for Gong's family's honor. Ip Man had defeated her father, Gong Yutian (Wang Qingxiang) in a battle that was as much about philosophical ideas as combat. The film follows Ip Man's years during the Second Sino-Japanese War, in 1938, struggling through poverty with his family. It also focuses on Gong Er's attempt at vengeance against the man who murdered her father, Ma San (Zhang Jin).

The story is told in a very disjointed way and it was really hard for me to keep up with what was going on in it. I often find these epic Hong Kong Kung Fu flicks to be dull anyway and wasn't too interested in seeing this one. It did get mostly good reviews from critics though and it's nominated for two 2014 Oscars (in Cinematography and Costume Design). It definitely deserves those award nominations and is very breathtaking to look at. I also think Zhang Ziyi is one of the more beautiful and sexy women in cinema today and she gives a great performance here. I'm not sure how I feel about Leung Chiu-Wai as an actor, he's not bad in this movie but I didn't really learn to care for his character much at all. The martial-arts scenes are grand and epic though and I'm sure fans of the genre will be more than pleased.

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