LIFE IS NOT A DREAM, BUT EVERY DREAM IS A LIFE

Rating: Null/10 (8 June 2001)

This movie is not about martial arts. That's why it is special. A great love story is never about love. A tragic tale of chivalry is never really about chivalry. It is not painful to see a lover go because that only makes the return so much sweeter. Insight is not bliss, but sadness that is too heavy to bear. Thus, it is essential to stop looking at this film as a martial arts film. But then, how to see? The assumption that the true martial artist must conquer gravity is, I believe, the keyhole to view the film. Gravity is the weight of the world, but also the weight of our emotions mixed up with the emotions of other people. The film is not only about gravity, but what gives gravity meaning, the ground itself. Every martial artist or dancer knows that the ground is the first friend or foe in any battle or performance. Indeed, one's relationship to the ground determines the outcome of many battles. You can leap from the ground, but you must come back. And here, the metaphor of leaving is similar to the dream, where the soul leaves the ground of the body to pursue its own fancy. But it is back in the body, upon waking, that the dream can transform the way that the dreamer relates to his or her body. When the Jade Fox complains bitterly that she was not given access to the secrets of certain symbols, she is bitter over the ground of life, although she could fly she could not soar, she could not let the uninterpreted symbols be filled by her own imagination, and herein was her downfall. The real meaning of every text is the imagination we bring to its mysteries, and no one can interpret them for us--not teacher nor student. The power of the student is to understand the unknown with imagination, the power of the teacher is to claim that what was once imagination is now "reality."