4.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for violence, drug use and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.30.13
This is the Dr. Zhivago of
martial-arts epics.
 |
| Having agreed to a martial arts duel with the angry Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang), Ip Man (Tony Leung) wagers the match's outcome on the precision of his particular brand of kung fu. The resulting skirmish is a masterpiece of graceful choreography and tighty edited camerawork. |
The parallels are so striking
that I’m convinced Chinese director Wong Kar-Wai must have studied David Lean’s
1965 film intimately. It’s not merely a matter of the factual elements in
Kar-Wai’s biographical drama hewing closely to key plot points in Boris
Pasternak’s novel; the luxurious work by Kar-Wai’s cinematographer, Philippe Le
Sourd, evokes strong memories of Freddie Young’s Academy Award-winning
camerawork, in Dr. Zhivago, just as Kar-Wai’s composers, Nathaniel Méchaly
and Shigeru Umebayashi, deliver a lush (and Western-based) symphonic score very
much in the mold of Maurice Jarre’s haunting themes for Lean’s film.
Factor in William Chang’s
sumptuous production design for Kar-Wai, with a segment that evokes the “winter
palace” chapter from Lean’s film, and the comparisons become too numerous to be
accidental.
More to the point, Kar-Wai’s film
— which he also scripted, in collaboration with Jingzhi Zou and Haofeng Xu —
takes its core characters through similar spirals of triumph and shattering
tragedy, against a backdrop of world events that scatter them like helpless leaves
in a hurricane. Individual lives are of no consequence within the inexorable
march of history, and yet we better grasp such nation-changing events because
of such individual lives.
All this, and The Grandmaster also is an exhilarating parade of ever-more-exciting martial arts bouts, very
much like genre classics that range from lowbrow action flicks (Enter the
Dragon) to highbrow dramas (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).
That’s an impressive to-do list
... but, then, Kar-Wai is an impressive director: one of very few who
understands how best to exploit the medium, blending every element — sound,
image, emotion — for maximum impact. Far too many filmmakers create
dialogue-heavy works that are little more than radio with pictures; Kar-Wai,
first and foremost, puts the “motion” into his motion pictures, unerringly
amplifying viewer response with touches as subtle as falling rain, or the
graceful slide of a shoe on a slippery surface.
We cannot help being amazed,
transfixed, even transported.
