"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (2000) - Director Ang Lee's Surreal Martial-Arts Based Love Story and Character Study

[DonRocks]

Considering how many films I've seen during my lifetime - albeit skipping over an entire decade - it is amazing that "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" is the only one of Ang Lee's films that I have watched (I don't *think* I saw "Sense and Sensibility," but I'm certain I haven't seen "Eat Drink Man Woman," "Brokeback Mountain," and "Life of Pi," and all four of these are films that I want to watch. I hadn't seen "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" since it was released in 2000, and I remember being absolutely dazzled by it at the time; however, I watched most of it yesterday, and realized that all I'd remembered were the amazing special effects. I was very distracted yesterday, and spent nearly two hours blankly staring at the screen, so I'm rewatching the entire film today, making sure to pay thorough attention.

Chinese-language films are as difficult for me to watch as opera, perhaps even more difficult, because not only is my head constantly bobbing up-and-down, but I find committing the characters' names to memory dreadfully difficult, as there are so many subtle similarities ("Li," "Yu," etc.), so I find myself cheating and making up cheesy English-language homophones (e.g., "Yu Shu Lien" is "You shoo, lien!" but they aren't always this easy to do).

I love the subtle facial gestures in this movie - for example, when Yu Shu Lien first means Jen Yu, and Jen Yu walks away, you can sense a very faint, but also very definite, look of skepticism on Yu Shu Lien's face - this is but one example of many.

Now 1:10 into the movie, I have to say that I really don't love it. I know it's the highest-grossing foreign film in history, and that it's nearly universally acclaimed, but I wonder how much of that is due to the cool fight scenes. This plot is positively meandering, and it's just going nowhere - what is this movie even about? Yes, there are a couple of love stories going on, with their worlds colliding, etc., but outside of the jumpy fights, I'm finding the film almost tedious. I really thought I wouldn't be saying this, as I positively loved Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon when I saw it in 2000 - I appreciate the fact that they aren't overdoing the fight scenes, but those are really quite beautiful, and most likely why this film is so popular. 

The extended love scene in the cave did grow on me, however, and strengthened the substance of the plot, although I'm not sure how it will fit in with the rest of the film. At 1:13 into the movie, it seems like it's been quite awhile since I've seen Li Mu Bai, who is really the pivotal character - his desire to turn his back on the life of being a warrior usurped by his desire for vengeance, once he found out that Jade Fox was in the area. There are two parallel stories (three, if you include Li Mu Bai's and Yu Shu Lien's unrequited love for one another), but they're operating independently, or so it seems - there's still over 45 minutes left, so maybe things will bond together in the home stretch.

Ha! Dark Cloud riding into the wedding party ... this could have been substituted with, "Elaine! Elaine!! Elaine!!!" In a way, it's fitting that I'm watching "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" on the day when there are so many women's marches around the country, because it's something of a "chick flick" in that it's loaded with powerful women (hence, the title - powerful things are everywhere around you, where you least expect them). Jen Yu's dismantling of Iron Arm Mi with one hand, sideways, while sitting at a table, as well as her beating the holy hell out of every guy in the bar, is thoroughly representative of the bad-ass women in this movie (that was a fun sequence, and scenes like this are the movie's biggest strength (high-wired flying notwithstanding)).

In the end, everything *did* tie together, and I liked the film much more than I thought I would. I was multi-layered, complex, heartbreaking, rich with symbolism, and much better than I was thinking when I was partially through the movie - it was also about the *longest* two-hour film I've ever seen.

But how can you at least not *like* a film that has scenes such as this?