Ang Lee’s career as a director displays a remarkable variety – from the investigation of Taiwanese family matters in Eat Drink Man Woman to the sweeping American Civil War drama Ride with the Devil; from the delicate social mores of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility to the martial arts fantasy of his new film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
But one thing is constant in the diverse oeuvre of the Taiwan-born director: his interest in human interactions and emotions. Into the traditional Chinese genre of wu xia, a mythic world of epic heroism pitting good against evil, he inserts a subtle psychological interplay – and gives women an unusually central role.
The genre of wu xia (“martial chivalry”) goes back to ancient Chinese legends, but reached its apogee in the early part of the 20th century, when wu xia novels became vastly popular. One of those was the four-volume work by Wang Du-lu on which Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is based. Such novels, along with TV series and movies, were an indelible part of Lee’s youth, so this film is a homecoming of sorts, the realisation of a long-cherished ambition. It has been a huge hit in Asia and will hopefully do well here, too – it is the caviar version of all those trashy chopsocky flicks of which our TV channels seem to have an endless supply.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is centred on two interlocking relationships: first, that of dedicated warrior Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-fat) and his female counterpart Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh), and, second, that of aristocratic maiden Jen (Zhang Ziyi) and bandit leader Lo (Chang Chen). Li and Yu are longtime comrades-in-arms, carrying out their holy mission of standing up for the underdog, but also nursing a hidden love for each other – it simmers under the surface but dares not speak its name. Jen, meanwhile, is baulking at her destiny as the good, submissive wife of a bureaucrat; she admires the freedom and self-mastery represented by Yu – and has a yen for the sexy, swashbuckling brigand.
As do so many legendary stories, Eastern or Western, the narrative revolves around a mystic weapon – a sword called the Green Destiny. It’s a fabulous version of Hitchcock’s McGuffin. At the start of the movie, Li wants to get it off his hands and get on with a peaceful life, rather like a Clint Eastwood figure determined to hang up his guns once and for all. Except that, predictably, his plans are foiled and soon he has to embark on a new mission in the eternal war against evil, in the person of the wicked Jade Fox (Cheng Pei Pei).
The action flows fast, with many an impressive hand-to-hand battle, with or without weapons. The clash of the two women, bringing an entire armoury into play, is especially striking. The fights are filmed in the exhilarating style of the genre, with characters able to run up walls and swoop through the air as if weightless, to move at astonishing speeds and to balance on the highest points of a bamboo forest. It is all quite breathtaking.
But Lee does not allow the viewer to detach from the characters involved; he keeps bringing us back to the feelings between them, to the ways they rub up against each other. In so doing, he infiltrates into the movie that characteristic Lee tone – a bittersweetness that does not compromise the flashy heroics, but places us firmly in the realm of human emotion.
Yeoh, a veteran of martial arts films and the James Bond instalment Tomorrow Never Dies, is superb; she embodies YuÃ-s complexity and occluded feelings remarkably, while still being able to perform all the derring-do in an utterly convincing way. Zhang (seen in The Road Home) and Chen (Happy Together) are equally convincing, and their love story insistently tweaks the heart. For me, Chow is the weak link, but not because he’s the actor least experienced in martial arts movies (he replaced kung fu star Jet Li at the last minute); there’s something blank and bland about him that blocks our potential sympathies. Either that, or it’s those rather pursed little lips that seem – even when he’s smiling – to communicate only constipation.