It looks like it's Ip Man all the time in
Chinese cinema these days, with this movie 'The Grandmaster'
being, I believe, the fifth movie based on the life of the
legendary master of the art of Wing Chun. But hold on
one minute, this isn't just any old Ip Man movie, this is
celebrated director Kar Wai Wong giving us Ip Man. What
does this mean? This basically means that you're going
get a lot of very pretty pictures, immersed in a bunch of
esoteric stuff which may or may not having any meaning to you
whatsoever. Thus if you are a fan of the works of Kar
Wai Wong, of which there are many, most of the time coming to
his defense, you will get a lot out of the movie. If you
are not a fan… of which there are more… you're probably going
to call it B.S. For disclosures sake, I'm not that big a
fan.
What can Kar Wai Wong do that very few people can argue
with? Fan or no fan? The man shoots a pretty
picture. Opening scene, Ip Man (Tony Leung Chiu
Wai) is in a rain storm beating up hordes of people. I'm
not sure why. But it sure is beautiful to look at.
From there, Ip narrates this tale, at least in part, telling
us of his charmed life, his beautiful wife, and of the stress
and tension in the small town that he lives in.
Apparently there is trouble between the northern and the
southern regions… and I must admit that the politics of what
was presented here was murky at best, at least for me… but an
old man (Wang Qingxiang) is stepping down from his post as
what I assume is King Kung Fu Master, passing down the
torch of the house of Gong to his top assistant Ma San (Jin
Zhang). Just in case anyone doubts that Ma San is worthy
of this title, he beats the living snot out of a bunch of
folks, which admittedly doesn't make old man Gong very happy.
The people of the south need a hero,
and while Ip Man is beneath most of them in status, by his own
admission, he is the one chosen because he kicks ass the
best. Now this leads to another shift in the film in old
man Gong's daughter Gong Er (Zyi Zhang) who is also a master
of the
family art, known as 64 hands, and she
challenges Ip to a fight of sorts. It's a little
confusing, and Ip loses… kind of… but a byproduct of this
fight is a healthy respect, maybe even a little love between
these two. A love which cannot be.
Then the Japanese invade. This was not good for China
and most lost everything, including Ip who's once charmed life
is now in shambles, having lost two children in the war,
followed by him relocating in Hong Kong and leaving behind a
wife he will never see again. This section also
introduces to us another character in The Razor (Chen Chang),
a rebel fighting for the Chinese resistance. I don't
know exactly what to tell you about this particular character
or even why he's in the movie, outside of the fact that the
character has a fight sequence that is simply phenomenal and
the producers chose not to cut it. The Razor does
interact with Gong Er on a train as she helped hide him from
the Japanese invaders looking for him, but that would be it
for that relationship and at no time will the Razor or Ip
interact with each other, so I'm not sure what purpose the
Razor actually serves in this movie, and truth be told, he
probably needed to be cut from the movie.
The movie follows Ip's life in Hong Kong for a bit, goes back
in time, back to the mainland where Gong Er challenges Ma San
for something he did to old man Gong, jumps ahead again where
Gong Er and Ip Man talk about some stuff, then it just kinds
of ends.
Let it be said that another thing this director did quite well
in this movie is photographing his star, Zhang Ziyi. The
woman is already blessed with a very simple, uncomplicated
beauty, and Wong takes exacting care to film a beautiful woman
in a way that makes her even more beautiful.
Amazing. But of course, while looking at a pretty woman
is a nice thing, this isn't why we watch movies. We
watch to be entertained, enthralled, amazed, inspired,
humored… and what if I was to tell you that 'The Grandmaster'
accomplished most of those things, but yet I still didn't care
for the movie all that much? That doesn't even seem
possible, but yet that's where we are.
Yes, 'The Grandmaster' is wonderful to look at, the Woo-ping
Yuen choreographed action sequences are second to none, the
performances from Tony Leung and Ziyi Zhang, and most everyone
supporting them are rock solid… but what was this movie trying
to tell me? Even at well over two hours long, the
narrative was sketchy at best, downright haphazard at
worst. There doesn't seem to be a central focus for the
story or for the characters, the timeline is tampered with for
reasons that are beyond my simple comprehension abilities, and
we've already discussed the inclusion of certain characters
and plot points which either needed to be completely edited
out or better still, edited up, so that they integrated
themselves better into the story.
In a word, I would call 'The Grandmaster' a mess. It's
an amazing mess, a mesmerizing mess, a spectacular mess, but a
mess nonetheless. Rumor has it that Wong originally had
a four hour rough cut before the scissors got taken to his
movie, and while I have no real desire to watch a four hour
movie… I'm pretty convinced that somewhere within those
original four hours is great film dying to claw its way out.
