sublime

Rating: 10/10 (8 April 2009)

There's a telling moment towards the beginning of the movie. Shu Lien is riding through the crowded streets of Peking, when her eye is caught by a little girl forced to perform tricks for the crowd -- holding a stack of bowls on her head, while lifting her legs over her shoulders. We've only Shu Lien's lingering, inscrutable glance that tells us that this woman warrior is seeing herself in this little girl -- and will soon see another trapped performer: Jen.
Ang Lee's direction is, at times, achingly beautiful, but without the obvious self-awareness of Wong Kar Lai's shots. He lays out each scene so that the positions of the window, the table, the characters seem almost incidental and paratactic -- but it's also inconceivable that they should be any other way. I have seen it, Lee seems to say, and I am laying it out for you as a precise offering.
The precision allows for an incredible number of "issues" and "subplots" to bubble beneath the surface -- which ranges from detective story (who stole the sword?), revenge drama (Li Mu Bai's master), to romance. But the underlying core is, as with all of Ang Lee's films, the tension between different orders of life, and how that resonates with each of the characters. Take the story of the film's arch-villain, Jade Fox, for example. Ostensibly she desires power -- killing the head of Wudang to gain the kung fu manuals -- but what undoes her is her longing for family, the core of Confucian values; she sees Jen as her daughter, sister, even spouse; the betrayal she feels when Jen turns to Li Mu Bai motivates her vengeance and downfall. That Jade Fox, the character on the farthest fringes of society, should embody so much desire for traditional values (framed by the irony of her serving as Jen's family "nurse" for so many years) creates a subtle circularity that feels strangely Buddhist. Indeed, the "letting go" stressed by Buddhism informs both the characters and Ang Lee's direction: Jen lets go of her ego and purges herself in that final act of sacrifice; Li Mu Bai releases his own ego by trading his life for a too-late confession of love; and Lee, by drawing on the wordless ballet of martial arts choreography and stunning shots of the Chinese landscape and subtle, unforced character studies, allows the film to breathe and become the masterpiece that it is.