Haunting, surreal martial arts fantasy

Rating: 8/10 (16 May 2004)

Like most Westerners I had always associated martial arts films with the standard Bruce Lee action vehicles or the humorous Jackie Chan equivalents. My wife, however, who is herself Chinese, tells me that in the Far East there is a tradition of using martial arts elements in many different cinematic genres, including historical romances. 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' is a rare example of a film of this type to have achieved success in the West. Set in Imperial china, it tells the story of two warriors, Li Mu Bai (male) and Yu Shu Lien (female) and their attempts to recover a valuable sword which has been stolen by a young girl named Jen Yu. Jen is the daughter of a wealthy aristocratic family, and outwardly a respectable young lady, but she is secretly in revolt against her background and the limited possibilities open to her, and has secretly been receiving martial arts training from a notorious outlaw named Jade Fox. (Also a woman; strong female characters are a tradition in martial arts films).
Intertwined with the action sequences are two love stories; one between Jen and her bandit lover Lo, the other between Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien, who are obliged to hide their feelings for one another by the austere warrior code to which they subscribe. I found that the romance between Jen and the desert nomad Lo was never quite convincing; it seemed like the East Asian equivalent of those old Hollywood desert epics where the heroine ends up falling in love with the sheikh who has kidnapped and ravished her. The love between Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien, however, although at times it is so repressed as to be virtually invisible, does lead to the most poignant and tragic scene in the film when they realize their feelings for each other when it is too late.
Although I could never believe in her love for Lo, the character of Jen is an interesting and ambiguous one. At one level she is an arrogant and spoilt brat, whose mischief-making leads to pain and suffering for others. At another level, however, I found myself sympathising with her and her impatience with her stifling conformist background where she is expected to be dutiful and obedient and to achieve nothing in life other than to marry the boy of her parents' choice. Her theft of the sword can be seen both as wanton disobedience and as a necessary act of justified rebellion. The lovely Zhang Ziyi, who seems set to succeed the luminously beautiful Gong Li as the queen of Chinese cinema, did well to suggest both sides of her character. Of the other characters, Michelle Yeoh as Yu Shu Lien was probably the best; Chow Yun-Fat as Li Mu Bai seemed rather too stolid.
What really made the film stand out, however, was its visual beauty. This may seem a strange quality to praise in a martial arts film, but the fight scenes were the most beautiful of all, particularly those between Yu Shu Lien and Jen. I should point out that this is in no sense a realistic film. The characters have powers that verge on the supernatural (although in the context of the film this is attributed to their rigorous martial arts training). They are able to run up vertical walls, float through the trees, bound effortlessly across the rooftops and leap high into the air and hover there. This is achieved not by computer-generated effects but by stunt work on wires, often performed by the stars themselves rather than by stunt doubles. The result is a strange, breathtaking aerial ballet of an exquisite beauty which contributes to making this a haunting, surrealist film. 8/10.