2000: Year Of The Cat Fight

Rating: 10/10 (9 January 2006)

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" is one of two Ang Lee movies I've seen. One, "The Ice Storm," takes place a couple of towns up the parkway from where I live. This one is set half a world away, yet watching it makes China feel closer than New Canaan. I have a feeling a lot of people get a similar sensation.
Master Li Mu Bai (Yun-Fat Chow) is tired of kicking butt; he only wants peace, and perhaps a new start in life with the woman he loves but keeps a wary, correct distance from, Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh). Matters are complicated with the theft of a great sword, the Green Destiny. Lien's investigation quickly centers on a bored rich girl named Jen (Zihi Zhang), who hides her skills under embroidered gowns but is ultimately as much about rebellion as Lien is about conformity. When the two women square off, sparks will fly, literally. Yet Jen has goodness in her. Can Bai and Lien save her from becoming "a poison dragon" in the service of her murderous master, the Jade Fox?
I never really got into martial-arts movies, probably because of the culture gap but also because until recently they didn't get much respect from critics, at least here in the West. That was already beginning to change by 2000, but "Crouching Tiger" was the clear tipping point, Oscar-nominated for Best Picture and praised to the skies for its beautiful cinematography and gravity-defying fight scenes.
Those fight scenes are amazing, each in a different way. One resembles a dazzling lyrical ballet on a lush bamboo forest; another is a grand goofy bar fight which is played for laughs. The best fight is between Jen and Lien, a cinematic centerpiece every bit as great as Rick and Ilsa's last scene on the tarmac in "Casablanca." No doubt it got PC points among Western critics for featuring two women in battle, it also is a nice way of bringing out the central tension in the film's deceptively simple narrative, which is that between cultural obligation as embodied by Lien, and individual happiness as sought by Jen.
Earlier in the film, Jen lays her cards out on the table for Lien, with whom she hopes to be friends: "I'm getting married, but I'm not happy about it," Jen says. Lien's wooden reply: "I've heard. Congratulations." Much later on, after Jen has run out on her wedding and stolen the Green Destiny, Bai talks about taking Jen as his student, to save her from being corrupted by evil. "What if her husband objects?" asks Lien. Bai gives her a look which says it all: What planet did you beam down from? She's Patty Hearst now, and about to become Darth Vader. Her husband's wishes are the least of our concerns.
Not to Lien. While oddly liberated by her single status (which in turn is due to her self-restrictive attitude about being in mourning for a long-dead fiancé), Lien is the cultural touchstone, or rather millstone, of this drama. She and Bai are clearly meant for each other, but she resists. Oddly, while this puts her at loggerheads with audience expectations, Lien is also the movie's most empathetic character, more so than the remote Bai or spoiled Jen. As played by Yeoh, Lien offers us a passionate center who both embodies the code she and Bai live by, and betrays that code's limitations.
Getting all that on screen is a great triumph for Yeoh, and one I needed to watch the film more than once to pick up on. She's so remarkable in her fight scenes and running up and down walls (yes, I know wires were involved, but even so the athletic skill necessary to sell such action is impossible to imagine) people miss the consummate acting of her performance, the aware inertness of her eyes, the expression of sad longing that she allows to poke through her bland facade. Chow is great, too, and Zhang beyond that in a star-making performance of beauty and rage, yet I wouldn't feel the warmth I do for this film without Yeoh inhabiting so much of it, not just body but soul.
The DVD which I found for under $10 has not only both the dubbed and subtitled versions of the films (which are radically different, and both worth viewing as they bring out different aspects of this deep film) but a funny commentary track by director Lee and co-writer James Schamus, which is remarkable in and of itself for its tone. You'd think they were Joel and Crow having at a Roger Corman flick on "Mystery Science Theater 3000" for all the potshots they take at their masterpiece. I guess you can be humble when you make a film as good as this, easily the best film of 2000 and a cinematic milestone that will inspire generations yet unborn, whatever future film technologies dish out.