Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Whether you consider it an action film for women or a "chick flick" for men, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a gorgeous Chinese fantasy

Minor spoilers

Wo hu cang long (original Chinese title) is perhaps the first Wu Xia movie to hit the big screen in the West. Wu Xia—an action-fantasy genre featuring heroic and magical characters, beautiful surroundings, intense passion and larger-than-life martial arts sequences—is the substance of countless novels and movies in China, but has remained almost unknown outside Asia.

Although Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was directed specifically to introduce Wu Xia to Westerners, there are certain movie conventions and cultural assumptions that may leave first-time viewers scratching their heads. I thought it might be worthwhile to write a little bit about the conventions of Wu Xia and how they relate to this film.

So what's it all about?
The story takes place in 19th-century China. Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat), a legend in his own lifetime, is thinking of retiring from the warrior's life. He has seen too much blood spilt and too many lives ruined, and his real desire is to marry fellow warrior Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) and settle down. To that end, he intends to give away his legendary magic sword, the Green Destiny, to a friend, but it is unexpectedly stolen by a mysterious character with unnatural fighting abilities. Meanwhile, Lien meets and befriends a young, beautiful aristocrat, Jiao Long Yu, called Jen (Ziyi Zhang), who chafes at her sheltered life and views her impending arranged marriage with fear and disgust.

It isn't long until we discover that Jen is actually the mysterious fighter who has stolen the Green Destiny. Somehow, Jen has learned a martial art that is only taught by specific monks at a cloistered temple—the same martial art at which Li Mu Bai is a master. Mu Bai is intrigued by this girl, who shows obvious talent but has not yet truly mastered the art due to her impetuous nature and imperfect training. However, the entrance of poisonous female assassin Jade Fox (Pei-pei Cheng) further complicates issues. As if we didn't have enough characters jumping in already, Jen is visited before her marriage by former lover Xiao Hu Luo, called Lo (Chen Chang), a desert thief who tries to convince her to run away with him.

Giving any more detail on the story would largely deprive a potential viewer of some of the movie's richness. Suffice to say that, as with many Wu Xia films, the relationships between the characters are intricate and dynamic, and there is a good measure of tragedy involved.

Who's the dragon? Where's the tiger?
This is one of the problems inherent with translating films—it's awkward to explain what someone's name means in subtitles without breaking up the flow of the story. Chinese speakers will recognize that Jen has a name that can be translated as "dragon," and Lo, the thief, has a name that means "tiger." The tiger is the traditional symbol of western China, and the dragon the symbol of the East. Within the context of the story, Lo and his band wait in the desert for unwary travelers (the crouching tiger) and Jen must keep her fighting abilities secret (the hidden dragon).

What's with all the flying around?
Well, it isn't exactly flying. It's a convention of Wu Xia that certain martial arts masters, due to their tremendous strength and long training with heavy weights, have the ability to leap higher and further than normal people—seeming to defy gravity and the laws of physics. This supernatural ability sometimes appears awkward to Western audiences, as indicated by one group of teenagers in our audience who snickered uncontrollably every time someone left the ground. I have to admit that although some of the wirework in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was absolutely fantastic (the scene in the bamboo forest comes immediately to mind), there were some graceless sequences where the actors LOOKED simply suspended like puppets, not leaping and bounding like gazelles.

Anything else you didn't like?
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was adapted from a novel, and sometimes it shows. When writing a book, the author can afford to take long detours and extended flashbacks; in my opinion, this is a luxury most movies cannot afford. Right in the middle of this two-hour film, there is a long flashback sequence detailing Jen and Lo's first meeting in the desert; while it is often passionate and sometimes funny, it seriously breaks up the narrative flow.

What was good about it?
The actors, especially Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh, offered near-flawless performances, making these fantastic characters largely believable to a skeptic audience. (I can always tell when a foreign-language film is particularly effective, because I forget I'm reading subtitles.) The cinematography was breathtaking, and the colors saturated—running the gamut from the grey pre-industrial cities to the browns and tans of the desert to the lush greenness of the forests and mountains. And even if you're no martial arts fan, the action scenes are jaw-dropping in a way only wirework fighting sequences can be.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon isn't perfect, but it is fantastic in both senses of the word. I hope its popularity will lead to the translation and release of more high-quality Wu Xia films outside China.

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