An Ambitious Attempt, Not Consummated

Rating: Null/10 (17 January 2001)

Spoilers herein.
Ang Lee is one of two best mainstream directors working today who has deliberately worked in different styles, genres, artistic philosophies even. (The other is Ridley Scott.) Here he tries to inject art and majesty in a common vehicle. To remain true to the vehicle, he must use a thin story (though with numerous threads) and an understated acting style. I think this understated focus on faces helps make the subtitles more palatable than they would be otherwise. They are also larger and higher than normal, so one's eye doesn't have to jump so much from face to word. There's no question that this film was conceived with the western reading eye in mind.
Lee pumps up the skeleton well enough with grand vistas and wonderful sets. The vision is surreal, which befits the mythical drama. In this and several other ways, he greatly surpasses the `Star Wars' feel. I must say that the final cave/warehouse was too theatrical -- it just didn't fit the rest. Some of the mattes are annoyingly fakey. The bambootop fight was ungraceful. But those are relative nits.
What I wanted in this film was a whole new level in choreographing the CAMERA during fight scenes. I know this is a hot topic among directors just now, and think he is quite up to the challenge. He has already shown mastery of the inside, emotional camera, and the notion of bringing this to dance excited me. He teases with some spectacular camera movement, but it is always in a conventional frame. Guess he wanted to sell a lot of tickets instead of reinvent the medium.
What I mean: with the fights, you have several characters, the two (or howevermany) fighters, the swords, the viewer and the camera. In a good film, some of these will merge. In a masterful production that merger will shift so that the camera is the sword, the viewer, then the fighter. (Here, the green sword IS a central fighter.) But add to that the complication of the idiom: each fighter and weapon is actually just a token for the master. Each fight is a battle between invisible characters, whose perspective the camera can also take.
Lee plays these fights too safe, and it really annoys because he shows us ever so fleetingly what he can do. Sometimes, the camera is the sword, sometimes the master, but in teasing glimpses only. He's concerned with making sense, and that requires sticking to convention. Maybe as he gets older, he'll do this again, but with more multidimensional vision, more enlightenment, less concern for the general viewer.
But check out the fight scores. This drummer knows the dimensions we're talking about, because he follows Lee's camera when it leaves the body. Cool.
This film also has the sexiest literary scene I've ever experienced. (And that counts the lush "Pillow Book.") It will be worth owning for that 15 seconds alone. Watch Jen's calligraphy, obviously done by a master. You won't ever forget it now that I've pointed it out. Watch the subtle camera movement. The whole of `Quills' in a few seconds! That reading eye again.