If you ask me, I don't know who Ang Lee is.
This statement does not refer to the citizen of the aforementioned name and surname (because how could I know someone named Ang Lee!), but to the director who made so many completely different films. What connects Reason i sensitivity i Wedding shoulder? Nothing. But it's still Ice the storm a masterpiece. Except that it could easily have been a Lawrence Kesden film. From Kezden (Silverado) to Eastwood (Unforgivable) the shortest path is called U saddle sa the devil. The trip turned out to be quite deadly.
Just as there is no resurrection without death. So-called Ang Lee returned from the other world with a film Stealth tiger, hidden dragon. This was not said just for the sake of offensive imagery. Because, first of all, it is again a film by someone who seems to have never made another film, although there are so many films that he signed before. Ang Lee is a damn artist. This time such knowledge carries a positive political connotation.
On the other hand, again, Stealth tiger, hidden dragon it is in more ways than one beyond flm, which is difficult to place in any focus. A whole mess has already been created around it: Ang Lee's new work is aiming for a straight ten An Oscar, one of which is up for best film in a language other than English. The potential American film of the year is actually a Chinese film, which makes it even more so Hollywood. With only one exception, the actors who perform in the film do better with English than with Mandarin Chinese. And for them, in a certain way, Stealth tiger, hidden dragon flm in a foreign language that should be their mother tongue - because, no doubt, they are all Chinese. They are even more than others: each of them, in their own time, in their own way, spread the glory of Chinese film.
PICTURE OF THE SOUL: Genre classification of Lee's film is also a difficult task. Such a question had not been asked before. This time it is inevitable. Stealth tiger, hidden dragon is, conditionally speaking, one fantasy - whatever that means. His template is kind of Chinese palp, that is, the film was shot on the basis of one of the seven (or eight) novels by Wang Du Lu from the 1930s, which are set in China in the 19th century, which - says Ang Lee - probably never it is not existed except u my boyish fantasies. Stealth tiger, hidden dragon is, therefore, open palp recorded by a lurking addict palpate, who impersonated a professional artist in high society. Analogously, this must necessarily be a melodrama: the film, indeed, is about a longing that will not materialize into happiness, and the realized happiness that is the source of a new longing.
The story is basically simple: a famous warrior, dedicated to martial arts as a state of mind (Chow Yun Fat/Chow Yun-fat, icons of Hong Kong cinema, known here from the film Spare the killers), falling into the temptation of doubt, descends from the holy mountain to his native village, intending to discard forever his legendary sword called Green destiny. He hands it over to his somewhat grown-up friend from childhood, also a famous fighter, the Vestal (Michelle Yeoh, Bond's girl iz Sutra ne dying never), whom he clearly loves, as she loves him, which both have carefully hidden for years. It was well said somewhere: they had the courage to do everything but touch each other. Fassbinder would love this film.
However, in Beijing, where Yu Shao Lin (the name of the warrior, very symbolic!) carries the sword, it is stolen one night and - here are the vicissitudes. Although it is ostensibly hidden from us, the viewer knows from the first that the thief is a young girl, the governor's daughter about to get married (Zhang Ziyi), but the secret stretches the evil witch Jedda Fox (Cheng Pei Pei/Cheng Pei-pei), who, under the moonlight, turns into a masked fighter, a kind of kung-fu Zoro. Is she on the side of good? It's hard to say. Not because she is in love with her former abductor, a desert bandit, but because all the heroes of Lee's film, in addition to latent/hidden feelings - which is, no doubt, pathetic - are also characterized by moral ambivalence, and this, in turn, is the result of the first law of melodrama . Reason and sensitivity. With the fact that, as in every melodrama, reason displaced from personality (he is zakon) so that the soul would suffer more. If he could read this text, Douglas Sirk would say: Aha!
And its signatory, prone to pathos, admits that the melodramatic nature of Lee's film leaves him breathless. Because it is the basis of the whole story (metaphor) a Chinese legend about a pure soul. The story goes that once upon a time there was a boy who jumped from the top of a holy mountain, believing that if his soul was pure, he would be granted the wish that his father would get well. You already guessed it: the girl – hidden dragon, lurking tiger – jumps off a mountain to check her soul in the last frame. The most magnificent las eternity. And a very sensible decision. Bliss of cinema. The end.
BALLET OF FATE: But we are actually just at the beginning. This text is partly inspired by banalities that should be kept quiet. I think it's called the front desk. What attracted professional critics to Lee's film (apart from the certified cult statusa of that director) is his visual beauty. In principle, there can be no dispute about that. However, viewed from the viewpoint of genre canostics, as a form, according to the rules as it was realized, Stealth tiger, hidden dragon is a kung fu flm (spaghetti Isternia) - therefore, it belongs to one of the (by critics) despised sub-genres. The one who wrote that Ang Lee's film represents a kind of thing was not far wrong cultural shock. If it had been filmed by another Chinese, say King Hu, or John Woo, that is, if it had been filmed by Robert Close, it doesn't matter, he would have been heartily spat on. Many people wonder what a damn great artist like Ang Lee, who reads (listen, reads – records!) English classics, has to do with a kung-fu saga in the manner of a Chinese five-paragraph novel?
Let's say that, this time, it is the choreo-dramatic essence of the genre formula: more than ever before, kung-fu is a kind of ballet for Lee. But, first of all, it has always been a part of kung-fu films precisely in its choreographic dimension the poor art. So raw. This, by the way, conditioned the specificity of the sub-genre montage procedure, which is based on the economy of dynamic counterpointing of frames from only a few frames (thumbnail). Liev's film, on the other hand, is first-rate (Hollywood) production – it cost 16 million dollars. Today, such a budget conditions - if the term is at least partially correct - the radical digitization of the film space. A computer is an action. Using this technology u finish, Ang Lee has come to the very end: the heroes of his film fly over Beijing rooftops (that's why Peter Pan is often mentioned in the depictions), climb vertical walls, while the climax of this enchanting virtuality is a duel between a famous warrior and a young girl in the canopy of a bamboo forest, which is simply perfect in all components.
But that sequence is imbued with an ironic twist, of sorts ofen distance. Ang Lee denounces his own exaggeration, he reveals the conscious intention of that accumulation of attractions. That's right Stealth tiger, hidden dragon programmatically declares it as a baroque film, in which a crumb necessarily lives kempa. Kung-fu baroque/baroque kung-fu - is that even possible?! Be that as it may, and it is as it was said, that is what the one mentioned earlier consists of political aspect of things: damned great artist + baroque flm = transition of a (once) despised genre into culture (which, however you take it, is really shocking).
With that in Hidden tiger, hidden zmaju there is, basically, nothing that was not already in kung-fu films of the seventies. This makes Ang Lee akin to Paul Verhufen: Stealth tiger, hidden dragon is the same as i Zvezdani warriors – sublimation of its genre. Such an operation is impossible to carry out without a strong foothold in tradition. Ang Lee is open about the matter: his cast je all stars list of kung fu acting legends. Chuck Stevens, the critic, is right Film comment, when he says that Lee's film is a kind of "Who's Who". The pun refers to King Hua, one of the greatest Chinese directors, with whose oeuvre Li establishes a strong referential connection. It is reflected not only in the fact that Hu was the one who at one time introduced the character of a woman-warrior into the mythology of kung-fu, who was portrayed in his films by Chang Pei Pei (here in the role of Jedda Fox), but also reconstruction two of the most famous fight sequences of 30 years ago, from King Hua films Come over da we drink together i Touch woman. The latter is a fight in the bamboo canopy. A damn great artist turned author. One genre continues.
Hence, another kinship is also undeniable: Ang Lee's film shares with The matrix that tiny space between eras. If the achievement of the Varsovski brothers showed that the films of the future will not be shot with the help of technology, but that technology will be conditioned by a new form of storytelling, then Stealth tiger, hidden dragon proves that in the same way, from the very essence of the changed filmmaking technology, the entire past must be reexamined - and rediscovered mobile slika. It is no coincidence that these two films also have that common the denominator whose name is Yuen Wo Ping, whom some consider a genius of choreographing martial sequences, others a stunt magician, a new Joachim Canute, Ang Lee, a director better than himself, but who is only a master of women.
If you ask me, I know who Ang Lee is!
