December 20, 2000
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Hidden Dragon Lady |
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Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, director Ang Lee's return to movies in Mandarin, is set in the mystical psychedelia of the ancient Orient. Critics' reviews have been rapturous and ridiculous — they've heaped praise upon it the likes of which have not been heard since the Beatles released the White Album (giddy drooling is usually the special preserve of pop music reviewers). As far as I'm concerned, Crouching Tiger is a completely wacky film full of flying superheroes in fabulous cape-like costumes, prancing across vertical surfaces and jumping atop slanted roofs with courageous choreography, saving the world from an evil villainess with the comic-book name Jade Fox.  Reading the papers, however, one would get the impression thatCrouching Tiger is a bold martial-arts movie set in an atmosphere of magical realism, with a feminist message suggesting that even in the time of Confucius, women wielded swords, played sexual aggressors and would willingly chase a guy into the desert because he stole her comb and then fuck him into submission because, well, why not? After the dismal failure of last year's Ride With The Devil, a Civil War vehicle for Jewel that no one wanted to see, I can see why Ang Lee decided to try something totally different, returning to his native tongue to make a fantastically original and wildly creative movie. The lush Ching Dynasty scenery (here I must admit that I have no idea how that differs from, say, the Ming Dynasty) the flying-wire grace and the bewitchingly beautiful swordswomen seduced me. And in the deceptively dainty Jen (Zhang Zi-Yi), around whom every other character's sexual energy seems to revolve, Ang Lee has built a gorgeously twisted anti-heroine: she walks around looking angry and bored, and in scene after scene, it seems that people don't know whether to fuck her or kill her. In the beginning of the film, Jen keeps the governor's mansion baffled by mischievously stealing and replacing a holy sword, not because she wants it, but just to drive them crazy. She takes down a cafeteria full of men, sends sumo-size wrestlers hurtling down the stairs, takes on a platoon of warriors camped outside the city and turns even her mentor into her nemesis. My kind of girl. All the same, I spent a lot of Crouching Tiger musing about how this film encourages us Occidentals — not to mention modern-day Mandarin-speakers — to buy into an idea of ancient Asian hot blood. Of course, the Asian female as a sexual fetish has taken us to all kinds of bad places: prostitutes during the Vietnam war, Thai sex slaves, escort services that promise submissive Asian ladies. But to turn this image on its head — to present Jen as a sexual predator — only feeds into the inverse fantasy, the Dragon Lady. Obviously, Ang Lee's characters are much more nuanced than any of these archaic archetypes, but they all begin with the same mythology. This is not Ang Lee's fault; even as I write this I am saying to myself, Just let the man make his movies! He's not responsible for cultural stereotypes! But I believe that the frequently awed response to Crouching Tiger stems from our desire to believe in the exotic east: first Richard Chamberlain in the mini-series Shogun, and now this. It's the same logic that would have us think that everyone in old India was practicing sex straight out of the Kama Sutra, while forgetting all about the ritual wife-burning. While there is much allusion in Crouching Tiger to the trap of marriage — the bitch-goddess Jen, forcibly betrothed to some nerdy nobleman, envies the freedom of subdued single girl Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) — the truth is that high-born Chinese girls had bigger problems, since most of them grew up with bound feet. And all that fencing is not possible if you're hobbling around. I am not suggesting that Ang Lee is obligated to make a movie about the oppressive lives of Chinese women — I have still not recovered from reading about O-lan's miserable existence when The Good Earth was assigned in ninth grade. But, in my opinion, it would have made more sense to focus on the more subtle narrative, the sad sexual tension between Yu Shu Lien and her would-be lover, the Wudan warrior Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat), who cannot marry her for reasons of honor. At least that emotional tragedy fits the time in which it's set. The longing looks, the locked eyes, the shivering touches . . . this thwarted love is the unrealized ideal that will make the well-realized lust of Jen's life seem tawdry and secular by comparison. Just the same, the tragic romance seems more expected because it is a cliché — we all know that even swashbuckling heroes are complete idiots when it comes to love. Jen is a more compelling character — but then, she too portrays a different cliché, one of wild passions hidden in the elegant, austere and hallowed halls of Peking palaces. I prefer Ang Lee's wholly original renderings of how we live now, as witnessed in The Wedding Banquet and The Ice Storm, to this latest flight of fancy. The same themes that are explored in Crouching Tiger — essentially, the tension between liberation and tradition — are more interesting when studied in a modern times. After all, these days such conflicts are supposed to be more easily resolved — anything goes, right? But it is in the miserable space between what we wish for and what we are capable of that Ang Lee's best films reside. The Wedding Banquet tells the story of a gay Chinese-American man who lives happily with his lover, but is forced to marry a female émigré to please his Chinese parents when they pay a visit to New York City from their native land. Comic misunderstandings ensue, but The Wedding Banquet is a beautiful and colorful story of the elastic nature of family relationships and the unexpected tolerance we all have for the people we love. By the movie's end, we are given a vision of unconventional community, suggesting the possibility of home in unlikely places. Strangely, the imaginative genius that it takes to come up with a movie like Crouching Tiger seems less awesome than the specificity and detail that is required to make a movie about ordinary people just trying to get through the day with a little bit of dignity left over at the end. In the early seventies, Robert Altman, Bob Rafaelson and the other auteurs of the American New Wave did this on a routine basis. There's some real justification for the current complaint that most mainstream movies don't make it unless they involve space travel or cartoon characters or exploding buildings. We rely on independent films like Ken Lonergan's You Can Count On Me to surprise us with stories of relationships and emotions that us real people can actually imagine having ourselves. Like Lonergan, Ang Lee is another director with the talent to tell the truth. After The Wedding Banquet, he turned his keen observation of human nature — both its foolishness and its hopes for being better than all that — to the completely American setting of The Ice Storm. The 1997 movie studied the sexual mores of chilly Wasps in suburban Connecticut, with the Watergate hearings playing on television as a maddening, nauseating backdrop to drinking and adultery in the afternoon. In trying to be good, everyone in the movie just ends up in bad situations. Somehow, this is so much more tragic than anything that happens between Yu Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon might be a splendid new kind of kung-fu movie, but it is, in the end, still a kung-fu movie. Elizabeth Wurtzel and hooksexup.com, Inc. |
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Commentarium (10 Comments)
I do not believe that Elizabeth Wurtzel knows the first thing about Chinese culture or kung fu movies. By the time I got to the third tired reference about the exotic east and how she felt the movie was succesful because the west likes to fall in love with the wacky and psychedelic (her words, not mine) orient, I knew that was secretly her world view too.
Maybe it's careless writing in the form of cliched flourishes that bother me. For example her little aside about not telling the difference between the Ching and Ming dynasties (the Ching came after the Ming, and the Ming monarchy was made of Han people, while the Ching was ruled by Manchurians who were seen as invaders and outsiders) was not half as egregious as the comment about feminist swashbucklers in the time of Confucius. Well, the Ching dynasty was hardly in the time of Confucius since he was dead for at least 1700 years by the time it even started.
The reviewer looks ignorant when she tries to disguise herself as an expert on Chinese culture, and she does that when she reports that the character Jen is unrealistic because of her fearlessness, sexuality (and not all the characters revolve around her sexuality. Did you actually see the film or were you too busy reading the subtitles?) and unbound feet. Didn't she say in this same review that the sexually submissive Asian woman was a stereotype? Then why is she saying that the plucky girl could not have existed? There were feisty women in the Ching dynasty. Check out Empress Dowager Ci Xi who pretty much ruled the entire territory of Imperial China at the end of the Ching dynasty. And as for foot binding, it goes back to the early 19th century and and the Ching Dynasty goes back to 1644. I'm not sure when the story in Crouching Tiger takes place, but Jen could have certainly had unbound feet.
Let me not forget the reference to the Sumo Wrestler in the fight scene where Jen is disguised as a young gentleman. Well, thanks for blanketing all the Asian cultures again. I have one word for that:Japanese. I think she means the Shaolin monk. People who regularly watch Kung Fu movies recognize that stock character, so if she says that Crouching Tiger is just another kung fu flick, she obviously does not know what she's talking about since she can't even recognize a commonly-used stock character.
She shows a shallow knowledge of Chinese history and total ignorance to some of the kung fu movie references and conventions that Ang Lee has used beautifully and hysterically in this film. Which is why I found it hilarious when she decided to compare his body of work with itself.
Maybe you can compare Prozac Nation to Bitch, since they are both about Ms. Wurtzel, but you certainly cannot compare the Ice Storm to the Wedding Banquet to Sense and Sensibility to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. This man's body of work is so diverse and highly imaginative that you can maybe play favorites, but just because you find hilarity in mundane minutia of a gay Chinese American yuppie's life doesn't mean that it far surpasses a cinematic treat because it's got some fight scene in it, and the characters leap across rooftops and have wacky nicknames. Not all good films are "realistic" indie flicks. And some middle-class white American 36-year-old's reality is certainly not mine.
Do some research on the history of kung fu films before being an expert on the chinese culture. It's a large country and I'm sure that in the Ancient Orient (ugh-these words are from the review. The Ching dynasty is actually not quite as ancient as the Greeks or Romans, but I guess accuracy isn't the point of this review) some people are really fucking and not just casting longing looks at each other.
Oh, I loved the film and found it really moving. And the kung fu scenes were gorgeous. Not another kung fu movie for me.
Great to see "BITCH" back in the saddle. She should write more.
Dear Editor,
Elizabeth Wurtzel is 1) not a very good writer and 2) not a very good observer, which makes her writing worse. Her writing meanders because she's going nowhere except to the end of the page. You may even know this yourself, but you've got her around for name recognition. Anyway. Best of luck.
I think that the last sentence of this review tells it all, "just a kung fu movie after all." I have never understood having someone with contempt for a particualr genre do reviews in that area. The author of this review misses the point entirely and should probably be relegated to doing opinion pieces on films like "Waiting to Exhale" or something like that where she won't be forced to drag in her analysis of sex roles in oppressive male dominated societies by the hair.
I love Elizabeth Wurtzel's writing, and her prespective is, as always, original and thought provoking. I hate complimenting anyone because I always sound like I am kissing ass...which may well be...but in this case it is well deserved. It is good to see the author writing and her review, has at the very least piqued my interest in regards to this movie. I beg that she keep up the good work, and continue to write in the intelligent and honest manor that her fans have come to expect of her. Thank You...
This was an AWeSome MoIve...
Whomever you are, D.S., thank you! You addressed -- admirably -- everything I was going to write about Elizabeth Wurtzel's embarassing, egregious waste of cyberspace. Are you single? Ahem. Anyway.
And one more thing: Manchu women (which Jen states that she is, clearly, during the desert love scenes) did not bind their feet. Maybe Elizabeth Wurtzel should bind her writing hand -- clearly her brain has already suffered some sort of oxygen deprivation. Sorry, that was two. What the heck, may as well write off a little of the steam the garbage raised in me (in good Dragon Lady fashion?).
I think that one CAN compare Bitch and Prozac Nation: both -- well, especially Bitch with its attempts at cultural criticism -- were smug, narcissistic and full of embarassingly ill-informed opinion. Funny how the first two so often lead to the third. . . (I only checked out Bitch because it came free as a reviewer's copy. I mean, who'd a thunk it'd actually be more self-serving and annoying than her first book?) If people like her would just SHUT UP and LISTEN for a change instead of running their mouths or pens off, assuming that the world was just waiting for their opinions on everything, they'd find that we (Asian/Asian American women, etc.) do not need ignorant, condescending reviews like this to explain how people like Ang Lee are misinforming the "American" people about Chinese culture. There is a reductive (or stereotypic if you prefer) term for the tone of your review, too, Elizabeth (and it's not "Bitchy" -- you really shouldn't flatter yourself): "White lady unbearable." And, in case you want to skip the research on this too, that has nothing to do with the White Album.
The real pity of this review is that it spends more time discussing what Ang Lee should have made than what was made in order to fit the writer's agenda. If an Asian woman is strong she is a Dragon Lady, if she is too weak, she fits the submissive archetype. Yes the praise does not stop for the movie. However, mostly it is praise for the spectacular visuals and martial arts action. No one is saying that this is the second coming of Christ where he finally liberates women from the tyranny of bound feet as Ms. Wurtzel so desperately is seeking.
Ms. Wurtzel remains as marginal a reviewer as she is a marginal sociologist. Freedom is not only central to crouching tiger, but boundaries: east, west, political, tradition and honor and the failures of any of these boundaries to allow for (or provide) happiness to current generations. This movie isn't describing the Ching Dynasty: it's describing any generation's conflict and the wicked responsibility of growing up. Jen gets to stare directly into the 'center' when she jumps, its a place we're all planning on going someday, most of us against our will. Only children use the word fuck when its isn't really necessary.
Hey, I think you missed the mark on this movie. Particularily in reference to this just being "another Kung Fu Movie"
This was a very good movie and it might make some rather elitist people (no offence) feel more at home to call this something other than a Kung Fu movie, in that the great art of movie critiques always gives way to those who feel that a movie has to be French, serious and boring to be art. When I saw this movie I was moved by the fight scenes in that they were more of a wonderful dance than an expression of violence. And although I felt that the action was more similar to the dance troupe La LA La Human steps than to the martial arts films of the past, it was still true to its roots.
So lighten up with your calling this "just another Kung Fu movie"...It isnt necessary to elevate it to the level of the movie elites.This was a great Kung Fu movie, and thats ok...