Year
of the TIger
High art meets high
spirits in a rapturously romantic epic that really kicks butt
By RICHARD CORLISS
From the
beginning, the film seemed cursed. "We started shooting in
the Gobi Desert," recalls director Ang Lee, dimpled but unsmiling.
"That night the crew got lost in the desert until 7 a.m. We
finally got going, and after the second shot, a sandstorm
came in." Could things get worse? Ask producer Bill Kong.
"The Gobi is the hottest, dryest place on earth," he says.
"So each morning we lit incense for good luck. Well, we had
dreadful luck-it rained sheets, nonstop, ruining our schedule.
After a while one of the local people came around and said
the gods must be smiling on us. We asked why. 'Because you
burned the incense,' he said. 'We burn the incense when we
want it to rain.'"
With good
or bad luck, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon would have pro-vided
a stern challenge. Consider these factors: a $15 million action
movie that was also to be a poignant, tragic romance; a fight
choreographer, Yuen Wo-ping, who had won international acclaim
for his work on The Matrix and was bound to tangle with the
soft-spoken, hard-to-budge Lee; a top-flight all-Asian cast
featuring Chow Yun Fat (Hong Kong), Michelle Yeoh (Malaysia),
Zhang Ziyi (Beijing) and Chang Chen (Taiwan). Only one of
the stars-Zhang, then a 19-year-old ingenue-spoke anything
like the classical mainland Mandarin that Lee demanded.
At least
these difficulties were built into the scenario. What no one
expected was that Yeoh would injure her knee and need a month's
rehab in the U.S., or that the whole ordeal would be so damned
exhausting. "We shot around the clock with two teams," says
Lee, 46. "I didn't take one break in eight months, not even
for half a day. I was miserable-I just didn't have the extra
energy to be happy. Near the end, I could hardly breathe.
I thought I was about to have a stroke."
As the sage
said, dying is easy, filmmaking is hard. But everyone was
so serious on Crouching Tiger because Lee, who made his reputation
with adult dramas of manners like The Wedding Banquet and
Sense and Sensibility, had a child inside screaming to get
out. He wanted to pay homage to his lifelong ardor for martial-arts
novels and pictures. He had made beautiful films; now he would
bend his considerable artistry to make, dammit, a movie. The
sad story has a happy ending. All that agony has produced
exactly what Lee hoped to create-a blending of Eastern physical
dexterity and Western intensity of performance. High art meets
high spirits on the trampoline of an elaborate plot. Crouching
Tiger is contemplative, and it kicks ass. Or put it this way:
it's a powerful film and a terrific movie.
Based on
part of a Wang Du Lu novel from the 1930s, the script by James
Schamus, Wang Huiling and Tsai Kuojung concerns the theft
of a sword, the Green Destiny. This is the holy weapon of
Li Mubai (Chow), a legendary warrior looking for peace in
his later days. He entrusts the sword to Yu Shulien (Yeoh),
a gifted martial artist with whom he shares an unspoken love.
Then Jen (Zhang), daughter of a political bigwig, arrives,
and everything tips off-balance. The wiser, more cautious
adults sense Jen's avidity for rare and dangerous toys like
the Green Destiny. They are also suspicious of her governess
(Cheng Peipei), who bears a resemblance to the ruthless killer
Jade Fox. Then one night the sword disappears. And everyone
springs into frantic, purposeful motion.
In Crouching
Tiger, that motion has its own poetry, for these semi-gods
and demi-devils possess a buoyancy to match their gravity.
The film's first action scene, with Shulien chasing the sword's
thief (who, we soon learn, is Jen), sets the tone and the
rules. The two fight hand-to-hand and foot-to-foot. Jen suddenly
floats up, as if on the helium of her young arrogance, and
canters up and down the courtyard walls as if they were velvet
carpets, with Shulien in urgent pursuit.
Everywhere
in the world-in Asia, during the film's original commercial
run, and at the Cannes, Toronto and New York City film festivals-audiences
have had the same response to Crouching Tiger-rapture. They
gasp with glee as Jen and Jade Fox soar into the night. They
mist up at the friendship of Mubai and Shulien, two brave
warriors who haven't quite the courage to say I love you.
They happily accept the film's 20-minute detour to the Gobi,
where Jen meets her bandit beau Lo (Chang). At the end, they
sob farewell to an old warrior who gives a lovely valediction.
The movie
has its roots in Asian action movies of around 30 years ago.
It quotes famous fight scenes from two films by the action
master King Hu: Come Drink with Me, in which the young, fierce
Cheng Peipei defeats an inn full of martial studs, and A Touch
of Zen, with two knights doing battle in a grove of bamboo
trees. Lee had the inspired-or crackpot-idea of staging the
fight between Mubai and Jen on the trees' branches, 20 m in
the air. "I'd fantasized about this since boyhood," Lee says,
"but a lot of my ideas weren't feasible or didn't look good.
Nobody, including Yuen, wanted to do the tree scene, for a
simple reason: it's almost impossible. The first three days
of shooting were a complete waste. There were 20 or 30 guys
below the actors trying to make them float. It was just chaotic."
Finally it worked-a scene so buoyant that the audience soars
along with the stars.
Lee is a
visionary and a perfectionist; he demands more than his colleagues
can freely give. For the dapper, amiable Chow-Hong Kong cinema's
top tough guy before he became Jodie Foster's regal pupil
in Anna and the King-the experience was often "awful. The
first day I had to do 28 takes just because of the language.
That's never happened before in my life." Lee drove Yeoh,
whose family's language is English, nearly to tears with his
insistence on precise speech. But the beautiful action star
thinks it was worth the trouble. "I've been waiting 15 years
to work with this guy," she says. "He's gentle and very emotional.
During a sad scene at the end of the film, he kept telling
me to do different things, and when he'd come over I'd see
he was red-eyed, teary. He gets so completely involved. And
when he says, 'Good take' after a shot, he really means it."
For all
its pan-Asian star power, Crouching Tiger depends on Jen-on
Zhang, in only her second film. The actress says she labored
under "a pressure not to disappoint the director. I felt I
was a mouse and Ang Lee a lion." When first seen, Jen seems
lovely but unformed, a dreamy adventuress, a spoiled rich
girl with a skill to match her will. Gradually, though, Jen
(or, rather, Zhang) reveals a more toxic, intoxicating beauty.
Will she become a fearless heroine or a ferocious killer?
Zhang, surely, is guilty of one crime: she steals the film.
"She allows the audience to pour themselves into her imagination,"
Lee says. "It's not really her in the movie, it's you. That's
beyond acting. It's cinematic charisma."
Before shooting,
Zhang and her young screen lover Chang worked with an acting
coach. Chow and Yeoh crammed to speak Mandarin. And throughout,
Lee was learning the limitations in the laws of stunt physics
from the martial master Yuen. Movies are an education on the
fly, with pop quizzes every moment. How apt, then, that the
theme of Crouching Tiger should be teaching. In this war of
the generations, the adults are as eager to instruct the young
as the kids are to rebel against authority. In life as in
martial arts, knowledge is power. And only the most powerful,
like Chow's Mubai, can share it. He hopes to share it with
Jen. Teaching this bright, willful girl is as close as he
will come to fatherhood-even if the job carries fatal risks.
A film director
is the ultimate father figure, doling out responsibility,
praise and censure. On Crouching Tiger, Lee, who secured his
early fame with the so-called Father Knows Best trilogy (Pushing
Hands, The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman), was a father-teacher
to Zhang the budding actress, to Yeoh the tentative Mandarin
student, to Chow the man on the flying bamboo. And behind
Lee was another family figure-the young Ang, mesmerized by
tales of great fighters and images of impossible physical
grace.
However
much the middle-aged Ang Lee suffered in making this exquisite
film, he should take a little pleasure in knowing that he
helped realize the young Ang Lee's dream.
Reported
by Stephen Short/Hong Kong
|
|
|
January 15, 2001
| No. 2
COVER
STORIES
MEDICINE:
The Future of Drugs
Now that our dna has been decoded, the search for better, faster and more
effective medications begins in earnest
THE
LABS: Inside the Brave New Pharmacy
At a leading genomics company, the star of the show is a robot
DISEASES:
The Search for Cures
For AIDS, cancer, mental illness, obesity, Alzheimer's, etc.
Antibiotics:
The microbes are winning
Delivery:
Beyond pills and needles
Natural remedies:
Turning poisons into potions
Recreational
drugs: What comes after K and ecstasy?
THE
YEAR IN MEDICINE: An A-to-Z guide
T
H E A R T S
CINEMA:
East meets West
in a film with universal appeal
Robert de Niro and Ben Stiller team up in a funny
farce
Three generations of Ralph Fiennes in Sunshine
MUSIC:
Erykah Badu's new CD has soul and guts
TRAVELER'S
ADVISORY
|
|
