Good - probably seems better than it is because we are so desperate for quality these days

Rating: 5/10 (25 June 2001)

I appreciate the beauty of Lee's film. I also appreciate the way he can keep his characters defying gravity, throughout the film, without the effect ever becoming stale. Break the film down into its components and all seems good: photography, acting, music, story ... so why does it not even come close to the mythic loveliness of, say, "Star Wars"? I don't know. Two things bothered me towards the end... ... which means that I'm about to reveal something... ... spoilers ahead...
(1) Li ought not to have died. If Yu Jen had arrived in time to save his life, she would have succeeded in undoing some of the harm she had caused, and her repentance would have been less empty: she would have been able, by making a concrete gesture, to join the side of the angels. Instead she does no good at all and merely feels remorse. As a result everything after Li's death is anticlimax. Yu Jen performs what I take to be the Eastern equivalent of becoming a nun, by running away to Wudan mountain, meeting a former lover who no longer matters to us any more than he does to her, then renouncing the world by leaping into a chasm. Maybe Ang Lee's retreat into mystic tragedy would have worked if he had been sincere about. Somehow it felt forced.
(2) This is not so much a problem with the ending as something Ang Lee ought to have cleared up at some point or other. Jade Fox had some kind of grievance against the house of Wudan. What was it? We're told in a single line of dialogue that she was annoyed because Li's master had refused to train her, but this seems thin to me, especially since his decision was so clearly justified: training Jade Fox in the martial arts would be like handing an axe to a mentally unstable religious fanatic; besides, I presume that nobody is ENTITLED to be trained. How much richer the film would have been had the house of Wudan REALLY wronged Jade Fox in the distant past, so that although her subsequent actions were completely unjustified, they were at least provoked by an initial wrong committed by someone other than herself. -At any rate, I wanted to hear more about the nature of Fox's grievance, and whether it was justified. ...I don't want to sound sour. It's still a beautiful film, the only thing wrong with it being that it doesn't reach the heights it is so clearly reaching for, most likely because Lee just isn't suited to epics. "Eat Man Drink Woman" and "The Ice Storm" - that's the kind of thing he does well.