The film that will be remembered from the year

Rating: Null/10 (11 February 2001)

I've just read a good sample of reader reviews and I would only note that this film generates passions on both sides. A sign of greatness? Perhaps.
I believe this is a great AND unique film. Although grounded in a martial arts genre that has been popular for years in Asia, it transcends its sources. All Great (or to borrow a term from literary critic Harold Bloom) Strong films ride the delicate tension between homage and originality : those that claim jackie chan movies are really better remind me of musical purists who criticize,let's say Elvis or the Beatles for pirating the genuine contributions of others--unable or unwilling to acknowledge the important syntheses of styles these artists represent(great artist don't rob, they steal, right?). Does this film belong in the Top Ten? Who knows? I would argue that such ratings, while conducive to cocktail debates, are at best problematic and at worst inimical to any thoughtful understanding of film. To argue, for instance, that the Godfather or Citizen Kane is the greater film is reminiscent of those abstruse medieval debates concerning the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin. So back to the film in question: I believe Crouching Tiger (and this is a statement of faith, subject to invalidation by the Unknown Future)will be essential to the discussion of films of the early 2000s because it represents as well as anything I've seen in media the newly emerging sycretism of east and west in global culture. Crouching Tiger may be viewed as a landmark in weaving disparate cultural traditions into a satisfying and intelligible global lingua franca. A film like CTHD could not have been made before the wide dispersal (due I suppose in part to the sorts of technology we are using to have this very ediscusssion) of formerly isolated genres. The cross-pollination that CTHD represents will only widen in the future. There is, of course, a fair amount of anxiety and dread associated with such a process. This, as much as any particular strength of the film (and there are many, will make CTHD essential to any meaningful discussion of cinema in the early 2000s. That, my friends, is a useful definition of greatness. But that's just my opinion.