Lee begins with several huge advantages. Working with a Hollywood company -- Sony Pictures may be Japanese-owned, but it's still a Hollywood studio -- he has the sort of budget that earlier directors in the field could only dream of. (Actually by current Hollywood standards, the budget, a reported $17 million, is a pittance.) He has two of the four most recognizable Asian actors in the United States as his stars-- Chow Yun-Fat (Anna and the King, The Enforcer) and Michelle Yeoh (Supercop, Tomorrow Never Dies). (To answer the inevitable follow-up question, the other two are Jackie Chan and Jet Li.) His films' Academy Award nominations and his international reputation have given him the clout to attract the cream of Asian talent behind the camera as well.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon starts in a deceptively quiet manner. It is some time in China's distant past. Li Mu Bai (Chow), one of the nation's most famous warriors, has decided to retire from the world of martial arts, literally hanging up his sword, Green Destiny. He visits an old friend, woman warrior Yu Shu Lien (Yeoh), to ask her to take the mystically powerful Green Destiny to Beijing to be remanded for safekeeping to Sir Te (Lung Sihung). In the course of this conversation, we realize that Shu Lien and Mu Bai are in love with each other but have fought their attraction for decades for complicated reasons of honor that are explained later.
While handing over the sword to Sir Te, Shu Lien meets Jen (Zhang Ziyi), the beautiful and very young daughter of a local nabob. The two immediately bond: Jen, smart and tough, clearly reminds Shu Lien of her younger self.
It is in the handling of this material that it becomes apparent that Ang Lee is still Ang Lee, regardless of what genre he is working in. From opening logo to the end of this scene, a full sixteen minutes of exposition take place, essentially a sequence of conversations outlining the characters and, crucially, the behavioral and ethical codes of their world. Sixteen minutes may not seem very long to those used to arthouse films, which is how Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is being marketed. But for those versed in Chinese action cinema, particularly the Hong Kong variety that has dominated the field for twenty years, it's an eternity. No Hong Kong director, except perhaps the anomalous arthouse filmmaker Wong Kar Wai (Chungking Express), would dare lead off with that much exposition and character development; an H.K. director would normally contrive an opening action scene before settling in for the slower stuff, even if that scene had no real internal justification.
Audience expectation becomes an important factor here. For example, when Brian De Palma was making his early film Sisters, he instructed his composer, long-time Hitchcock associate Bernard Herrmann, not to write suspense music for a certain sequence. When Herrmann disagreed De Palma said, "But Hitchcock wouldn't use music here."
"That's right," Herrmann replied (in essence), "because he's Hitchcock, and the audience knows that."
The audience that is naturally attracted to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon -- the audience that knows Ang Lee's other work -- will not be bothered or surprised at all by the pacing; it has no expectation of how martial arts films are supposed to be paced according to the rules of the genre.
For everyone else, Lee's decision, even if one questions it, has a marvelous payoff. After the meeting between Shu Lien and Jen, we get the first action sequence: a nocturnal fight between Shu Lien and a masked thief (who quite obviously is Jen in disguise), in which the latter steals Green Destiny. After the slow opening, this magnificent fight scene has the impact of a thunderbolt. Staged by master action choreographer Yuen Wo Ping -- best known in the United States for his action work on The Matrix, though he's also fully directed some of Hong Kong's most entertaining films -- the fight is breathtaking, culminating in a chase that includes vaulting, a dreamlike form of jumping/flying in which the actors appear to skim effortlessly up walls and across rooftops. This form of graceful action, which implies some sort of spiritual as well as physical development, is so alien to most Western eyes that audiences may titter at first before accepting it as part of the movie's fantastic universe.
There are a half-dozen more such sequences spaced judiciously throughout the entire film. And while Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has other virtues, its greatest power lies in its action. Far more than Lee's earlier work, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon glories in motion. Its aesthetic, like most martial arts movies, has at least as much in common with musicals as with Hollywood notions of action filmmaking. It depends less on dialogue and strict forms of narrative continuity than on ideas of rhythm and visual American action cinema pre-John Woo. For that sort of beauty in Hollywood, one traditionally had to look to All That Jazz, West Side Story, the Astaire-Rogers musicals, and the tap dance extravaganzas of Bill Robinson and the Nicholas Brothers in Stormy Weather. In short the pleasures to be found here are likely to come as a delightful surprise to those who would normally never even consider going to a "chop-socky" film, an unfairly derogatory term for the genre in which Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon must be included.
The ways in which Lee's film deviates from standard Chinese action film practice may be a simple case of his particular concerns and personality, but they also may have to do with the models from which he's operating. He has gone on record about how it was the martial arts films of his Taiwanese childhood that made him fall in love with cinema, and those films are from an earlier era. In particular he is emulating King Hu, the first Chinese director to achieve critical recognition in the rest of the world; his influence can be seen throughout Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. (Hu, it must be added, died in 1997 in Pasadena, California, where he had lived for several years, while attempting unsuccessfully to get U.S. funding for some long-cherished projects.)
Three particular elements of Hu's work are strongly reflected in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The elder director incorporated the dance and acrobatic moves of Chinese opera (as well as elements of Sergio Leone's spaghetti-Western style) into a previously stiff style. He also recognized that the camera could dance as well, combining traditionally stylized staging with sweeping camera movement and ingenious cutting. And he gave women equal or superior standing in the world of action. (As a sign of blatant homage to Hu, Lee uses actress Cheng Pei Pei -- who starred in Hu's 1965 breakthrough hit, Come Drink with Me -- in a major part in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.) With the exception of anomalies such as The Long Kiss Goodnight, Hollywood, 30 years later, has yet to catch up with Hu on the issue of women.
It is ironic that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon -- which, in a poor field of competitors, is shaping up as one of the best films of 2000 -- may well be least enthusiastically received among die-hard fans of its genre. What appears striking and new to most audiences is likely to be less riveting to those who have always loved this form of cinema and who may feel peevish that it's taken a relative interloper from the arthouses to bring its glories to broader attention. "We've been trying to turn you on to this stuff for years!" they might justifiably cry. "And you wouldn't listen! And now you're giving all the credit to Ang Lee, who is largely recycling standard elements of the genre! What about Ronny Yu's 1992 masterpiece, The Bride with White Hair, of which Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a decent facsimile?"
In truth if long-time fans try to look objectively at Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, they will see a first-rank entry in the field, worthy of comparison to its forebears. And they should welcome anything that brings attention to their beloved genre. Meanwhile the rest of you should go see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And, assuming you like what you see, you should go out and rent The Bride with White Hair already.
