Americanisation of Chinese story

Rating: 9/10 (29 March 2001)

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has interestingly received far more attention, especially critical attention, in the US than it has in China! I teach in a senior high school in Ningbo and of the high number of students who have seen the film only a handful professed anything other than disdain for it. The main comment has been that they have seen many films like it but that they were better!
I don't know if this is true but it raises interesting questions about the reception of the film and how it has been perceived. Although it was directed by Ang Lee, a Taiwanese native and has been claimed as a Chinese film very vociferously by the Chinese media, there is a strong element of the film that is undeniably slanted toward a Western, and therefore in filmic terms by definition a Hollywood, sensibility.
This mystification of Chinese spirituality and history gives it an added pull at the American box-office where it's $100m + haul makes it a commercial success but this has failed to appeal to the Chinese mass market in quite the same way! In many ways, Crouching is symptomatic of the effect of globalisation, but a globalisation where America is the senior partner! Part of the success of the film lies in its marketing strategy which has followed Hollywood custom & practice in having a large percentage of the final budget allocated to publicity and presentation. This has not been seen in China before and coupled with the fact that the last films of Wong Kar-wai & Zhang Yimou were co-financedm by American money illustrates that America is more than keen, as ever, to try to seize a foothold in foreign markets no matter what!
But getting back to Crouching, the much lauded film music, featuring the cello playing of Ma Yo-yo sounds authentically Chinese in a romantic-tourist idea of what Chinese is and yet the soundtrack features a song sung in English that is effectively an action replay of Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On from Titanic.The fact that it is sung by Coco Lee, Chinese born/American raised, illustrates this duopoly that the film encompasses of trying to combine two widely disparate elements that have seldom been successfully married before. Thus, for American audiences, the mix of Hong Kong film style martial arts with Titanic-esque romance, with a hint of the spices of the East, makes for a tantalising dish.
Nevertheless, it is an excellent film. The action sequences may drag a tad but the adult romance stories, and especially that of the requited, non-sexual and respectful love of the Chow Yun Fat & Michelle yeoh characters place the film in another league to the often wafer thin love stories found in the average Hollywood blockbuster. It is undeniably epic in scope, rich in the texture of its images and appealing in its simple good versus evil conflict. Thus, it can appeal on different levels and rewards repeated viewings in a way that the other contenders for Best Film at this years Oscars do not. Zhang Ziyi could well be the next big foreign star in Hollywood and could be the major female success there that was once predicted of Gong Li.Her performance in Zhang Yimou's The Road Home promised much and Crouching has helped place her in a similar position to that Gong Li was in after Raise the Red Lantern. Now however, Zhang Ziyi is in a much better position to exploit her potential than Gong Li was because of China's developing position as the soon-to-be biggest economy in the world.
Crouching will be re-assessed in a few years time & I predict it will then be seen as an important event in the changing world political-economic sphere. Ang Lee has lent his name to a film that can in 2001 be seen as a celluloid representation of the process of globalisation & unlike other globalisation events re: Seattle & Prague, this one is popular!!!