Yi dai zong shi
Tags: revenge, historical

Plot synopsis:
The film narrates the life of the Wing Chun grandmaster Ip Man, beginning in the 1930s in Foshan and moving on to cover his flight to Hong Kong after the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the events leading up to his death.
The movie begins with Ip Man reflecting on martial arts, and then cuts to a scene of a fight under the rain between Ip and a dozen combatants. Ip Man wins, and experiences flashbacks of his life, from his early training at the age of seven to his induction into martial arts by his master Chan Wah-shun, and his marriage to his wife Cheung Wing-sing.
Ip Man's peaceful existence is threatened by the arrival of Gong Yutian, the Wudang Boxing martial arts grandmaster from northern China, who announces that he has already retired and has appointed Ma San as his heir in the North. He then concedes that the South should have its own heir. A flurry of discussions and fights erupt as various masters attempt to challenge Gong, but they are all barred by Ma San. As the Southern masters are deliberating on a representative, Gong Yutian's daughter Gong Er arrives and she tries to convince her father not to continue the fight, as she feels they are all unworthy. Meanwhile, the Southern masters decide on Ip Man to represent them, and Ip proceeds to be tested by three Southern masters before he challenges Gong Yutian. However, the "fight" between Ip and Gong turns out to be actually an exchange of philosophical ideas. Gong declares Ip the winner and returns to northern China. However, Gong Er sets out to regain her family's honour by challenging Ip Man, and they agree that if anything breaks, Ip loses. "Kung Fu is about precision", so whoever breaks a piece of furniture during the fight will be the loser. An intense fight breaks out between Ip Man and Gong Er, which concludes with victory for Gong because Ip broke a step at the very end (albeit while 'saving Gong from falling'). Ip and Gong then part on friendly terms, with Ip saying he wants a rematch.
Ip Man and Gong Er keep in contact after parting ways by exchanging letters, and Ip intends to bring his family with him to northern China, but his plans are disrupted by the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. During the war, Ip Man and his family descend into poverty and he loses his two daughters due to starvation. In the meantime, in northern China, Ma San becomes a hanjian and ends up killing Gong Yutian. When Gong Er returns, she confronts her elders for forsaking her father but they tell her that her father's final wish was for her to be happy and not to seek vengeance. Gong Er refuses to accept that, instead, she vows to never teach, marry or have children, and devotes her entire life for vengeance.
Ip Man moves to Hong Kong in the hope of starting a career as a martial arts teacher, but ends up facing all sorts of challenges because there were also numerous other martial arts masters. He defeats them soundly and earns a reputation. He meets Gong Er again on Chinese New Year's Eve 1950 and asks her for a contest one more time while implying that she should start rebuilding her martial art school. But Gong Er refuses, stating that many martial arts disappeared in the course of history; and that hers would not be the only one. A flashback 10 years earlier shows a confrontation between Gong Er and Ma San at a train station on Chinese New Year's Eve 1940, and Gong defeats Ma after a brutal and intense fight. However, Gong herself is heavily injured and loses her desire to use martial art.
The film then fast-forwards to 1952, when Ip Man and Gong Er meet each other for the last time. Gong confesses to Ip that she has had romantic feelings for him right from the beginning. She dies shortly after. Ip explains in a voice over that in the fight with Ma San, Gong was injured so badly she turned to opium for the pain and this was her downfall. The final scenes offer a visual montage as Ip Man's school flourishes, including a statement that Ip made Wing Chun popular worldwide and his most famous student was Bruce Lee. Off screen, it is stated that Ip Man died in 1972.

Review: THIS IS A REVIEW OF THE INTERNATIONAL CUT, NOT THE 'HARVEY WEINSTEIN' American VERSION:It was finally time for the great iconoclastic Hong Kong director to turn to martial arts in his intense and atmospheric telling of the great grandmaster teacher, Ip man, and he doesn't disappoint.Wong Kar-wai brings the poetic beauty of his "In the Mood for Love" to this Chinese action genre and executes it with a precise rhythmic heightening reminiscent of Sam Peckinpah at his best, while bringing out the experience of living through the Japanese invasion of China during WWII.The cast is magnificent, especially Tony Leung as the Ip man and Ziyi Zhang as Gong Er who perfectly embodies a kung-fu mistress trying to avenge her father.A Wong masterpiece to put on a level with his finest work!PS: One particular reviewer earlier criticized the editing of this film which, to me, smacks of putting down the film for not being more conventional.
About Ip Man, you should know that the fighting style he is supposed to have originated called wing chun, at least as taught now, takes some old Taoist notions about softness and intuited flow and creates a uselessly complicated and scholastic system of study.But the notions are powerful, and this is likely what attracted Kar Wai to a film about him.So the artificial limits here are the kung fu movie, a type of narrative deeply embedded in the national character.
It is the pretenders who fight, like Ma San. It is about honor and respect, not about violence.Movie fans who want a real martial artist star will prefer Donnie Yen in Ip Man (2008) which is artistically almost as good a film.
This is the best movie to tell you the most and best.It was not how many fights a man won that made him a grandmaster, it was how he thought and what he did to contribute to Kung Fu.It's not only about Kung Fu, but also about the self view, the world view and, believe it or not, going down to the earth - seeing others.Perfect pictures, wonderful story, beautiful actions and music...the only thing I would say not good enough is, the movie is only about 2 hours long.
That duel also marks a turning point for the movie, which shifts away from Ip and explores the vendetta that ensues between Gong Er and her father's power-hungry protégé Ma San (Zhang Jin) against the backdrop of the Japanese occupation of China.Against the better advice of her elders, she forsakes her betrothal to avenge the death of her father at Ma San's hands, which culminates in a thrilling battle set at an old railway station in Hong Kong one New Year's Eve. Where is Ip Man's involvement in all this?
A scene towards the end that portrays supposedly the last time Ip met Gong Er is infused with the director's signature sense of longing and regret as the latter reveals her feelings for the former, but how that bears relevance to what Wong is trying to say about Ip or Gong Er's tumultuous lives is too obscure.In fact, throughout the film, Wong offers little insight into the person of Ip Man. What might have been a meaningful portrait of his relationship with Yongcheng is lost when the latter is practically forgotten in the second half of the movie.
Nonetheless, both Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi also perform impressively given their lack of a martial arts background, the months of training to get them prepared physically for their respective roles paying off in the grace and confidence by which they execute their moves.Nonetheless, Zhang easily trounces Leung in the film's dramatic scenes, the former's combination of grit and vulnerability making Gong Er a more compelling figure than Ip Man. The fault of course isn't Leung's alone, as his usual penchant for nuance and understatement unfortunately working against his portrayal in a narrative that pretty much relegates his character's account as a marker of the passage of time.
Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Zhang Yamou's The Hero became an international sensations,The Grandmaster should join that small list.The Grandmaster has been in the making for more than 12 years and is Wong Kar Wai's labour of love.Here he collaborates with his favourite Tony Leung and castes him, rather improbably, as a kung fu master.The film looks at his early years till he set up his martial arts school in Hong Kong.We see him as a boy enrolling at a kung fu school in Foshan,China and become the last student of a legendary teacher.
He gets his shot at fame when a famous grandmaster from north, Gong Yotian, who is retiring, comes south and wants to appoint a successor who will carry his tradition forward and integrate the north and south schools.The southerners choose Ip as their man but he must prove his mettle in front of the old master.They face off in an encounter that is all choreography and zero fighting.Ip man passes the acid test of being a man of ideas and not just skill.This is a wonderful scene which sets the tone that this will not be another action packed martial arts film.Gong Er fights to honour her fathers name.
The grandmasters daughter Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi, in her last martial arts film!)has come with him and she has her own way of looking at things.She is hot blooded with a mind of her own and a unique penchant for interpreting her fathers words to drive her individuality.She challenges Ip to a dual and this sets up another amazing scene.They fight but it might as well be lovemaking.They float up in the air and circle each other like dancers more than fierce combatants.The memory of this dual will remain with them for a long time and Wong will show it to us again, this time with their noses brushing lightly.They part with great respect for each other.Some of these scenes are staged in opulent gilded bordello's with elaborate opera performances.
Ip's wife loves opera and he takes her to a bordello, and when Gong comes to meet her father and see his fight with Ip she asks him in wonder "Are you really going to take your daughter to a bordello?"He replies like the wise old master that he is.The winds of change in Chinese society were blowing long before the revolution.The film follows the story of Gong and Ip as they go their separate ways.
Shigeru Umebayashi is in good form here but he does not have the opportunities of In the Mood for Love kind of grandstanding.The Grandmaster is a film for every lover of cinema, not just for martial arts aficionados, and its a great way to discover the work of a Grandmaster of cinema who inspired the likes of Tarantino.Every artist is also a philosopher and so are Wong and Ip Man..
If you don't like the kind of film where the camera pans away from a fight to zoom in on some raindrops, don't watch it.The story is a little confusing, not least because it is as much about Gong Er as Ip Man - in fact it should have been called "The Grandmasters" (a title Wong Kar-Wai briefly considered).
This marks only the second martial arts movie that Wong Kar-Wai has dabbled in (the first being Ashes of Time), and the battles here between exponents were already miles better.While the film had started off as an Ip Man biography, that idea got broadly retained as Wong's research into the various martial arts form led him to include many more personalities, and grandmasters in their own right in the different styles of Kung-Fu, from the Northern to Southern fists that fans of the Wilson Yip Ip Man movies would already be well attuned to.
As you would expect from the auteur director, this film has a philosophical leaning toward the essence and spirit of martial arts, hidden beneath the broad Ip Man biography used to tell events in chronological order, and the central story of succession to the Martial Arts Association chair, which spun off into seeking a worthy representative for the South, and classical martial arts theme and elements of betrayal, double-crossing, sacrifice, and that of vengeance.And I'm pretty sure fans can identify their favourite Wong Kar-Wai moments and signatures that would inevitably creep into this film as well.
Then again, being a Wong Kar-Wai movie, characters like these do come and go in the narrative, although this one felt wasted for its potential.Zhang Ziyi also held her own since her Gong Er character got thrust into the spotlight, which I believe will soon eclipse the other martial arts role she's more famous for in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and credit to her for lending elegance to her 64-hands Ba Gua movement, and inevitable successor to the legacy of her father (Wang Qingxiang) and the Gong Family, proud to keep her heritage intact.
It may have slowed down the pace, but probably brought out what Wong Kar-Wai is famous for, and expected in any of his films.The Grandmaster is a gorgeous effort, chronicling the story of Ip Man from his prime 40s in the 1930s Foshan, his subsequent flight to Hong Kong and major events until his death in the 70s, with the Gong family saga playing in parallel to Ip Man's documentary-like story.
The Grandmaster chronicles the life of Ip Man Wing Chun (played by Tony Leung), in Foshan in the 1930s and his flight to Hong Kong after the Second Sino-Japanese War.Ip Man's peaceful life is threatened by Gong Yutian (Wang Qingxiang), a retiring martial arts master from the north, is doing anything but encouraging the friendship with the south.
His daughter, the beautiful Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi), is determined to avenge his father's death, but of course to do so she'll have to renounce a happy life with Ip Man.Wong Kar-wai's tenth feature film is a return to form for the Hong Kong auteur.
This film tells the biography of a martial arts master, whose life is interrupted by love and war."The Grandmaster" starts off very visually stunning, as Tony Leung and the adversaries fight in the rain in an epic style.
The thing the viewers have to realize is that this isn't just the story of Ip Man; it follows the lives of other grandmasters too - Razor, Gong Er, Ma San. Although the characters of Razor and Ma San are not developed well, the movie shows us how different art forms survived, and how many of them became extinct.
I think it's safe to say most people who would go to the theater to watch it are Martial Arts fans and they probably would expect to see something like Donnie Yen's Ip Man. However, I wouldn't call it a movie about Ip Man at all, but rather a Wong Kar Wai film with Ip man as one of the characters.
The more philosophical side of Ip Man. Director - Kar Wai Wong Starring - Tony Chiu Wai Leung, Ziyi Zhang The Grandmaster is a film about Ip Man, a master of Wing Chun and the teacher of one of the world's greatest and best known martial artists, Bruce Lee. However, do not expect to see Mr Lee, there is only the merest mention of his name in the final moments of the film.Also, do not expect a movie chock full of action; although there are obviously fight scenes, most are short, bloodless and at times just there to showcase the amazing martial arts styles.There has been a previous film about Ip Man, entitled, surprisingly, Ip Man (2008) and starring Donnie Yen. Where that film was more action (presumably to capitalise on Yen's ability), this is more subdued and reflects on the history of not only Ip Man, but the essence of Kung Fu, in particular the style of Wing Chun.
The Grandmaster is a biographic re-telling of the life of Ip Man, a Chinese martial artist most known for popularizing the style of Wing Chun and being the teacher of Bruce Lee. It follows his earlier years before and during the Second Sino-Japanese War as he grows his reputation and struggles with the hardships of life.The film was directed and written by Wong Kar-wai, a known art house director, and that definitely shows.
The story flows rather jarringly from one time period to other and you have to pay attention to be able to piece all the story lines together, from Ip Man's (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) own struggles to the tragedy of Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi), the daughter of Gong Yutian, the master martial artist of Northern China.Kar-wai's style definitely has its upsides as well, because the film looks phenomenal.
And even the non-fight scenes are shot in an interesting way and keep you with the film, even if you're unsure about the actual plot details.All in all The Grandmaster is worth a watch if you're filling to see a martial arts film with a unique style.
Let me start by saying that I have never seen a martial arts film before....and know nothing about the "heritage" of the genre.I saw The Grandmaster as the Surprise Film at the London Film Festival, had no preconceptions about it and to be honest, had it not been the Surprise Film, would not have ventured anywhere near it.The positives: a visually rich, stunningly composed film from the first shot to the fight scene in the rain (magnificent) to the very last frame, Wong Kar Wai fills every frame with detail and stunning images that almost overload the eyes.
I've seen the other Ip Man movies and if in fact his existence did occur than he had a rather un-illustrious second half to his life which this movie portrays.Love lost and love undiscovered in a country that historically favors separation,there isn't a lot of pity for the key players by the audience.The dialogue would be typical of a Kung-Fu movie if there wasn't 15 minutes of emotional build-up prior to the "You fight with me!" tag-line, I'm swearing off this director and everyone involved in the film except Ziyi Zhang who played Gong Er; she was quite delightful but only for about 20 minutes near the end.I honestly wish I could get my money back, I thought it was a loss of 2 hours in my life with no redeeming qualities; definitely not made for a Western audience :(.
"My father would always say people who practice martial arts go through three stages: seeing yourself, seeing the world, seeing all living beings." Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang)The Grandmaster is not so much a biography of the master, Ip Man (Tony Leung, resembling Barack Obama) ,who trained Bruce Lee, as it is a romantic impression of the dreams of lordless ronin warriors and those who still believe in good winning over evil.
Along the lines of an Art Film almost.If you are a martial artist who likes these Kung-Fu films with fighting scenes every 20 seconds, this film has a few of those, but this is more of an art film with beautiful cinematography, than some Kung-Fu fight movie.It is a reflective look at the life of Ip Man.
And as a drama, it is absolutely motionless.Conceived at a time when the entirety of Hong-Kong cinema went batshit crazy & started producing numerous films based on the life of legendary martial artist, Ip Man (whom the world identifies as the man who trained Bruce Lee), The Grandmaster differs in its portrayal of the Wing Chun master's life but I myself am not sure what exactly it was trying to be.Co-written & directed by Wong Kar-wai, this is my first stint with his works & it's extremely demoralizing to be honest because I've heard good things about this filmmaker.
The film boasts little moments of screen magic but not even for once does its different aspects come together to provide an immersive cinematic experience.Stagnant when it comes to pacing, lethargic when it comes to storytelling, dull when it comes to characters, stale when it comes to performances & laughable when it comes to action, Wong Kar-wai's The Grandmaster is a convoluted mess that disappoints big time despite no initial expectations & is without a doubt one of the worst films I've ever seen..
The last few ones I completely skipped, resting my eyes...The storytelling is somewhat confused as well - quite some time is spent on some characters that bring absolutely nothing to the story, like Razor, and events that again bring nothing...So, unless you are a total fan at collecting Kung fu fighting scenes I do not see many reasons why to watch this movie.
"The Grandmaster" focuses on the life and times of Yip Man (played by the immense Tony Leung), a master of the Wing Chun style of fighting, now increasingly revered as one of the martial arts greats, in some part at least due to the reverence of association to the iconic Bruce Lee. After a series of movies, most prominently featuring Donnie Yen, the great auteur Wong Kar Wai takes a jab at the increasingly glorified figure and delivers a mesmeric opus to martial arts.
But it probably wasn't the martial arts flick you wanted.The Grandmaster follows the story of Ip Man, the legendary trainer and mentor of Bruce Lee, and the main character of three previous "Ip Man" movies (The first two of which featured Donnie Yen, and if you're a martial arts fan that HASN'T seen the first 2 Ip Man movies, HOW DARE YOU...STOP READING THIS, TURN YOUR NETFLIX ON, WATCH THEM, AND THEN COME BACK HERE.) This movie had well-respected Kar Wai Wong in the director's seat, and many people were excited to see how his artistic styling would tell the as-yet untold story of the Wing Chun master in his later days.The results were...not what we expected.As a stand-alone movie, The Grandmaster is a beautifully told - and deliberately paced - story.