More than 25 years have passed since legendary Ang Lee honored the world with his mystical dramatic wuxia treat “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” The West fell silent before the appearance of this spectacle and saw that Asian cinematography is ready for the 21st century with its films where martial arts can quite successfully be combined with both drama and comedy, have truly deep plots, as well as beautiful visual effects and brilliant music.
“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” fulfilled all those conditions (though there’s no comedy here) and therefore quite deservedly won four Oscars and a hundred other awards and tons of nominations. Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh then clearly showed why Hollywood must count on them more seriously in the future, and the then young Zhang Ziyi’s role in this film launched her among the stars.
However, not even all excellent films manage to “age” nicely. This especially applies to the martial arts film genre, which, as years pass, has value only for fans of that genre (let’s be painfully honest 😀).
Is “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” still a classic as it was twenty years ago and worth your time?
Absolutely!
The film resembles Asian actresses with their blessed genetics and eternally young faces. As if it aged only a year or two, not twenty. 😀
The story says…
In the 19th century (during the Qing dynasty reign), famous swordsman Li Mu Bai decides to retire from the world of swords and therefore entrusts his famous (400 years old) sword, Green Destiny, to close friend Yu Shu Lien (who runs a private security company, will be something like G4S with swords and horses), who will then deliver it to their mutual acquaintance in Beijing, Sir Te.
The friendship between Mu Bai and Shu Lien is much more complicated than it appears on the surface. They’ve harbored strong emotions toward each other since early youth, but Shu Lien was supposed to marry Mu Bai’s close friend (named Meng Sizhao), who later died. Despite strong emotions they still harbored for each other, they decided to honor their loyalty to the late Meng, and decided not to reveal their emotions to each other and remain just friends.
Shu Lien successfully arrives in Beijing, where she’s Sir Te’s guest. One of the guests is also Jen, daughter of an influential governor. She’s been brought to Beijing for an arranged marriage that’s not to her liking at all, and she admires Shu Lien and her independent spirit. She’s also impressed by the legend of Mu Bai and Green Destiny (which is now kept by Sir Te).
The next night, a masked thief breaks into Sir Te’s estate and tries to steal Green Destiny. In a dynamic chase after the thief, Shu Lien discovers the thief hid at the estate of Jen’s father, the governor. Since this is a period when there were no cameras, and laws were quite strict, one couldn’t just rush into a guest governor’s estate without a scandal breaking out that could have dangerous consequences for everyone.
Soon Mu Bai also arrives in Beijing and joins Shu Lien in trying to find a solution. Shu Lien already has an idea who the thief could be (guess who that could be).
One tragic evening, the fates of a police inspector (Tsai), masked thief, Mu Bai and a woman named Jade Fox will intertwine. Jade Fox is, in fact, a famous killer who killed the inspector’s wife, as well as Mu Bai’s teacher (and precisely the intention to avenge his teacher is what kept Mu Bai with his sword for long), and on top of that she seems to be the masked thief’s teacher. The inspector dies in the confrontation, but the thief’s identity is revealed – it’s Jen. However, darkness still hid some answers.
That evening, desert bandit named Lo breaks into Jen’s chambers and begs her to go with him. A flashback from her past reveals a passionate love story that had to be broken off…
Whether Mu Bai will fulfill his mission and kill Jade Fox, thereby avenging his teacher? Whether Shu Lien and Mu Bai will gather the strength to officially acknowledge their emotions to each other and leave the painful past behind? Whether Jen and Lo will be able to be together? Whether possession of Green Destiny will give answers to its heroes and why this sword is so special, you’ll find out if you set aside one evening for the spectacle “Wo hu cang long”… um, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” 🙂
Why is this film so brilliant and wonderful, that it’s a film for everyone?
Well, let’s start with the plot. I’ve given you only a rough outline of everything happening in the film, but I’ve omitted so many brilliant details (“More like almost everything…” – note from subconscious) that are woven into this film, because they deserve to be experienced through the film. The beauty of Mu Bai and Shu Lien’s platonic relationship, told through their poetic dialogues and measured, yet simultaneously subtle glances, so characteristic of (once, but also now) expressing emotions in Asian culture. The anger and hatred that grew into love between the youthful and wild Jen and Lo. The graceful, yet simultaneously dark secret of Green Destiny. The history of the Wudang clan and their mystical scriptures known to Mu Bai and Shu Lien and Jade Fox and Jen (and why the last two people know the secrets of those scriptures).
The audio-visual aspect is beautiful, really artistic, and gives some pleasant vibe between real and mystical.
Action… ah, that’s real Nutella, plasma, coconut, banana, hazelnut and cherry on your pancake. Quite a few action films in following years/decades made such action scenes for which film critics would use the expression “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style” (not exactly these words, but similar 😀). And this film has some scenes that became classics and which fans immediately remember when you mention this film, whether it’s Shu Lien’s chase after the thief, phenomenal confrontation between Shu Lien and Jen or the bamboo forest fight (which is artistically done, there’s also the famous shot of the actress through bamboo leaves), as well as many other scenes.
All this couldn’t succeed without good acting.
Crazy and brilliant Chow Yun-Fat (has several excellent Asian films and tons of awards and nominations under his belt… there’s no one who hasn’t watched at least his film “Hard Boiled”) shone as the (almost) indestructible Li Mu Bai, top swordsman of monastic behavior complete with mild zen gaze and longing for Shu Lien. This modest actor (for years now the story is known that he’ll give almost all his wealth to charity after death) received numerous nominations and praises for this role, and many automatically connect this actor with this film, though he had other good roles… and sometimes not so good ones (the irony is that when you watch even those “bad” films, you still don’t feel you can give some remark to the actor himself ^^).
Michelle Yeoh… this actress is phenomenal to me in (almost) whatever role she appears in. With her everything has some zen gracefulness. She can move measuredly… and can also beat up opponents with that same gracefulness combined with sharpness. And she has that specific voice quality, that everything she says sounds like some great wisdom, as if she’s Confucius. I’m not kidding, if you gave her to read you a list of curses or your local pizzeria menu, it’ll sound like she’s reading you Sun Tzu’s “Art of War,” you’ll almost start taking notes. Michelle has roles in quite a few brilliant films and series under her belt (Hollywood delighted with her role as Bond girl), and will be busy in coming years in “Avatar” sequels and “The Witcher: Blood Origin” prequel.
And when you connect such a tandem, you get incredibly beautiful platonic love scenes set in a period when romantic expression of emotions wasn’t easy. You can really feel strong chemistry between Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh in this film. And one sad scene especially, uh…
Zhang Ziyi was 21 years old when she filmed the movie. Before that she filmed two relatively okay Asian production films, and then appeared in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”… and her world fame began. She got the opportunity to be in quite a few brilliant films of different genres (“Rush Hour 2,” “Musa,” “Hero,” “House of Flying Daggers,” “2046,” “The Grandmaster” and others). She should kiss the hem of another actress’s agent who was originally supposed to play Jen (soon about that crazy interesting fact).
We shouldn’t forget Chang Chen either as romantic bandit Lo, who gave one interesting dimension and nicely complemented scenes with Zhang Ziyi. We’ll soon watch this talented and awarded actor in one of this year’s most anticipated films… “Dune.”
I’d like to share a few interesting facts about this film:
- Michelle Yeoh didn’t take any engagements for a year to physically prepare and learn Mandarin for this film
- All action scenes in the film were done by the actors themselves. CGI was only used to remove ropes and wires!
- Beautiful actress Shu Qi was the original Jen and was already working on the film when her agent “pulled” her from the film so the actress could do a Pepsi commercial in Japan, so she was replaced by (then) young Zhang Ziyi. For some reason Shu Qi changed agents after that. I wonder why, that small agent decision cost her only world fame…
- Zhang Ziyi had no experience with martial arts at all, but had dance experience, which was incorporated into the film to look like fighting (this is, by the way, very logical and makes sense and if you’ve done both martial arts and dance, you’ll understand)
- This is the first foreign language film that earned more than 100 million dollars in the USA (in 2001)
- Ang Lee convinced Michelle Yeoh to accept the role by “presenting the film as ‘Sense and Sensibility’ with martial arts.” This is real sales pitch! 😀
- Yuen Woo-ping is a famous action choreographer. He worked on quite a few brilliant action-martial arts films, including “The Matrix”
- This was Chow Yun-Fat’s first film with martial arts theme
- Originally Li Mu Bai was supposed to be played by legendary Jet Li!
- The film is included in the “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die” edition
And so on and so forth.
Let’s slowly bring this chat to an end, with two more interesting/likeable pieces of information.
The budget for the film was only 17 million dollars… and it earned 213.5 million… WOW!
This is my true anecdote (I don’t care if you believe me or not, I’ll share it with you 😀). Actually, not the whole thing, just the essence. I once got a comment that apparently the phrase wo hu cang long applies to me (I don’t know Chinese, and it stuck in my memory because it somehow easily “slipped” off the tongue). Besides a very interesting explanation I got of what it means, you can imagine my surprise when I googled it for the first time and this film popped up… I didn’t know whether to be shocked or thrilled or both. I see you don’t believe me, I don’t care. 😀
Let’s summarize. This is a film you must watch (if you haven’t already… only if you’ve lived the previous 20 years without TV or internet, then I’d understand you). This is truly a classic. Phenomenal combination of drama, romance and mystical martial arts. Don’t let this third one put you off if you’re not a fan of that genre, you’ll make a huge mistake, trust me. 🙂
And did the sequel live up to expectations? Well, about that some other time…
Trailer
IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes | Metacritic
Format: Film
Premiere: 2000
Duration: 120 minutes
