Spectacles : “The Grandmaster,” “Drinking Buddies,” “Our Nixon.”

by David Denby

Published on September 9, 2013 in the New Yorker

In “The Grandmaster,” kung-fu warriors fight as the rain falls in torrents. It’s like a forties noir, but every raindrop in this movie appears to shine, by some digital-spiritual miracle, in iridescent glory. The writer-director Wong Kar-wai, in the past a maker of romantic-erotic drama (“Happy Together,” “In the Mood for Love”), has turned back to martial-arts movies, after reworking an early effort (“Ashes of Time”) that didn’t quite satisfy him. He has created a gorgeous, entirely aestheticized spectacle. The men fight at night, in chic black suits, crashing into doors and windows; the black-on-black color design, with its sparkle of water and broken glass, is a glamorous delight.

The movie begins in 1936, when the Japanese have moved into Manchuria, and China is on the edge of a murderous occupation. It is a time of reckoning—and of reconciliation, too. The severe martial-arts grand master of the north (Qingxiang Wang), his city occupied, arrives in Foshan, the southern center of kung fu, where he announces his retirement and allows his daughter Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang) to represent the north in a challenge match. Her opponent is the great fighter of the south—Ip Man (Tony Leung), an exponent of the Wing Chun style of fighting. “The Grandmaster” presents a series of ceremonious confrontations (all choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping, the grand master of movie fighting): the handsome, impervious Leung and the exquisite Zhang face each other silently, and rotate their hands into position—the solemn preliminaries are as momentous as the combat itself. As the two move into battle, slashing and spinning, often in closeup, the uninitiated may not be able to see much difference in method (Gong Er is a mistress of something called Bagua-style 64 Hands). The fight is a stunning whirl nonetheless; both the cinematography (by Philippe Le Sourd) and the editing (by Wong himself) have an indelible high excitement and precision. . . .

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2013/09/09/130909crci_cinema_denby