A Kung Fu That Maims and Romances Wong Kar-wai on His New Film, ‘The Grandmaster’

By NICOLAS RAPOLD

Published on August 16, 2013 in New York Times

Wong Kar-wai was recounting his research for “The Grandmaster,” the tale of the kung fu innovator who trained Bruce Lee. As he described crisscrossing the mainland to talk to aging martial artists, he could have been setting the scene for a movie.

“I went to a town in the middle of China. Winter, 5 o’clock in the morning, a train station, snowing,” Mr. Wong recalled. “I find a grandmaster. And he’s training with around 30 students.” With his 10th feature — his first original one since 2007 — Mr. Wong mines the generation-spanning heritage of martial arts cinema. “The Grandmaster” traces the rise of Ip Man (Tony Leung) in phases from the 1930s to the 1950s. Portrayed as a late bloomer, this fighter has his mettle tested by a revered northern master, Gong Baosen; by the upheaval of Japanese occupation; and in a fresh hand-to-hand twist on Wong-esque lovers’ torment, by Gong Baosen’s daughter, Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi).

It may seem like a departure for the director of lush mood pieces like “In the Mood for Love” and “Chungking Express.” But “The Grandmaster,” which opens on Friday, isn’t Mr. Wong’s first martial arts film (that would be 1994’s “Ashes of Time”), nor does it dispense with his obsession with romantic longing. And in fact his interest in the genre dates to his boyhood, growing up on a street filled with martial arts schools that were forbidden territory for a curious child. As he explained in an interview about his history with kung fu films, he has in a way been watching and wondering ever since.

Though the new film has played in China, abroad and in festivals, the version being released in the United States is a shorter cut. The American edit, with his approval, adds explanatory titles, character names and some different footage and hews to a more linear chronology. The highlights remain, like an almost phantasmagorical fight that takes place inches away from a roaring train in winter.

Reviewing the version that played at the Berlin International Film Festival in February, Variety called it “one of the most propulsive yet ethereal realizations of authentic martial arts.” The Hollywood Reporter noted that amid “some of the most dazzling fights ever seen on screen,” Mr. Wong seems “preoccupied with the introspective verbal exchanges between his battle-hardened warriors.” A box office success in China, “The Grandmaster” represents a step back into the limelight for Mr. Wong after his maligned American road movie from 2007, “My Blueberry Nights.” In between came the 2008 release of “Ashes of Time Redux,” a reworking of his 1994 attempt at a martial arts film, which originally received mixed reviews. “Redux” now seems like a needed creative exercise, and its loose, colorfully stylized adaptation of a serialized wuxia novel signaled that any Wong treatment of the martial arts will always bear his singular imprint. (As he said at a preview of “The Grandmaster” at the Museum of the Moving Image: “I can’t change overnight. I’m still that person.”)

Mr. Wong’s first exposure to the martial arts tradition came through novels of the sort that Mr. Leung’s character works on in “In the Mood for Love.” But movies took over soon enough. As he remembered the films that made an early impact, he zeroed in on the very real physical impacts of the 1970 Shaw Brothers film “The Chinese Boxer.” In the brutal story, a kung fu student must avenge the killing of his teacher by Japanese karate masters, and hardens his fists in order to wale on his enemies.

“It’s the first time that you feel all these punches actually hurt,” Mr. Wong said by phone from Hong Kong. “Today people have forgotten about this film. But it broke records in Hong Kong. It’s very violent, and very modern in a way.” After working with the celebrated stunt coordinator Yuen Woo-ping on “The Grandmaster,” Mr. Wong took care to cite past choreographers who gave martial arts cinema its heft. One giant died recently: Lau Kar-leung, whose “Challenge of the Masters” (1976) and “Legendary Weapons of China” (1982) he singled out as extraordinary demonstrations of fighting styles like hung ga. (Mr. Lau’s nephew plays one of Ip Man’s challengers.) The work of Sammo Hung in “The Prodigal Son” (1981) also caught his attention.

Mr. Wong’s earliest memory of watching Ip Man’s most famous pupil, Bruce Lee, is still vivid.

“I still remember the first time, thinking, ‘What is this?’ From now on, that’s a kung fu film,” he recalled. “With the other films before, the kung fu masters are very mature, very traditional. Bruce Lee was very modern, young, straightforward. He still has this charisma. This charisma is his confidence.” Still, “The Grandmaster” represents an effort to get back to the historical heart of kung fu and its schools; in Mr. Wong’s view, it’s a return to the legacy of kung fu, spotlighting the wing chun school of fighting, among others. Especially with the character of Gong Baosen, he also sought to re-emphasize “the manner, the formalities of these martial artists.” Aliza Ma, an assistant film curator at the Museum of the Moving Image who helped organize a Wong retrospective under way there, wrote in an e-mail that the director “marries a historical-realist agenda with a certain sense of mythopoeticism that surpasses the previously established contrasting subgenres of martial arts cinema.” Mr. Wong pointed out a trend toward fantasy in martial arts cinema of the last 20 years. While King Hu’s “A Touch of Zen” (1969) was already an established classic of the wuxia genre, “The Shaolin Temple” (1982), starring Jet Li, was a milestone in the fantastical strand. He likened its eye-catching techniques to the modern tradition in China of treating martial arts as a competitive sport. In films that followed “Shaolin Temple,” he said, “it becomes just show, it loses the essence of one major aspect: kung fu is also a weapon.” Just as the punches and kicks of wing chun deliver stinging blows, the lasting ache of romance in “The Grandmaster” leaves its mark. At a preview of the film in July, Mr. Wong recalled with a chuckle that he had heard the film characterized as a sui generis combination: “Doctor Zhivago” meets kung fu.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/movies/wong-kar-wai-on-his-new-film-the-grandmaster.html