‘The Grandmaster:’ The Messiest Masterpiece You’ll See This Year
Wong Kar Wai might be one of the best auter directors working in cinema right now. The Hong Kong-based director does things with film that are nothing short of stunning. And like any artist his work can sometimes be messy. Often his final edits aren’t really final at all, with his films getting re-edited by himself over and over. The Grandmaster when originally released in China was two hours and 30 minutes long. He then made another cut for the festival circuit that he considers the best that was 114 minutes long. However, when the film was brought over to the U.S. by the Weinstens the studio decided to cut the film down to just over two hours without the director’s input. What this does is change an masterpiece focused on love, motion and art into a horribly inconsistent biography about the legendary martial arts master Ip Man (Tony Leung Chiu Wai). Thankfully, Wong’s profound cinema can still shine through, redefining what one should expect from a martial arts film.
To explain the plot of The Grandmaster is a bit of a disservice to the original film, since story is the last thing the film should be concerned with. However, since the US version is unfortunately almost completely plot driven, here we go. The film follows the life of the legendary Ip Man, who eventually taught Bruce Lee and is credited with popularizing martial arts in the modern era. It starts pre-WWII as the northern and southern styles of martial arts are beginning to come together because of outside influences uniting China. This is the first half of the film, and truly does focus on Ip Man, though to say that the story really advances here would be a lie.The true point should be Ip Man’s budding relationship with Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang), but it’s eschewed for a focus on how Ip Man became famous. The second half occurs after the Japanese invade China and Ip Man eventually moves to Hong Kong. This latter half of the film deals with him setting up a school in Hong Kong and attempting to reconnect with Gong Er.
In reality the film should be about both Ip Man and Gong Er and their struggle to keep their art and heritage alive (the original title of the film was The Grandmasters). Unfortunately another loss of the US edit is that Gong Er is turned into a love interest instead of a main character. This leads to a second half that feels almost entirely disconnected from the first, but not for the stylistic and thematic reasons it should be. Gong Er becomes the central focus of the second half of a film that is clearly trying to be about Ip Man, and it feels utterly pointless because of it. This is especially true when she is the subject of the final two fight sequences (one a brilliant battle symbolizing the unstoppable passage of time and change, the other a metaphoric study on the art and movement of martial arts), and yet the film concludes proclaiming that Ip Man is the main character.
The movie is, in fact, a love story more than a martial arts film, and there lies the initial problem many people will have with it. If you’re going into The Grandmaster expecting a kung fu movie, you’re going to be sadly disappointed. Not that the fights aren’t interesting, but this is only a kung fu movie because it has kung fu fights. In reality its an art house love story that reflects on ideas of motion, time, progress, heritage and self. Sadly the marketing and US editing try to make it what people expect instead of what it is.
The film in this form is all over the place. Since it has been edited to tell a story instead of express an idea it feels disjointed and at times boring. The beginning of the film thrusts so many names and characters at you it’s hard to keep up and the tenuous story line it is trying to build is broken by scenes hopping from one place to the next almost incoherently. Most of the first half takes place in the same set (a gorgeously shot concubine house). In this form it’s hard to understand why so much time is spent with Gong Er near the end of the film or why the plot doesn’t actually seem to advance anywhere for the majority of the movie. As a historical bio-pic The Grandmaster is an utter failure.
But it was never meant to be that, and in the moments the film’s real intentions are allowed to shine through it is an utter masterpiece. These moment occur mostly in the film’s “fight scenes,” which are easily the most beautifully shot martial arts scenes ever caught on film. Wong places the power of the scenes in style, not punches. There’s a beauty in the way things flow that perfectly defines through motion and image what many martial arts movies can only say in speech: martial arts are an extension of self and a mastery of movement. Kicks, punches, flips, hits and dodges in this film are not attacks, but expressions of character. Fight scenes are metaphors for love, society, loss and devotion. Unlike most action, the purpose of these fights is not to beat a bad guy, but instead to further the themes of the film. Watching The Grandmaster with this in mind can reinvent what you should expect from your martial arts movies and action cinema in general.
It isn’t just in the fights that glimmers of the film’s original intentions seep through. While not making a historical film, Wong brilliantly defines the historical eras that are occurring. Instead of presenting what happened he chooses to use image and motion to create the meaning of the history that is occurring around the film’s characters. The use of tight shots and a limited amount of striking sets means we never truly get a big world scope and yet his perfect arrangement of shots and creation of scenes so staged they’re almost paintings creates a better idea of the times than any exposition would have — or does in the case of the needless exposition in this US version. The world, images and motion are the story, and the main character is martial arts. Meaning comes through montage, mise en scène and subtlety, not explanation. At times Wong keeps his camera locked on an actor’s face for long monologues that would drag if they weren’t so powerfully performed, and would be even more impressive if the film’s original intentions had been kept intact.
It’s a rare occurrence that a film might be better dubbed, but in this case looking at subtitles means you have to look away from the beauty in every shot. Thank goodness there’s barely any talking during the fights or the entire thing might be ruined. It’s enough to make you want to learn Cantonese so that you can truly understand the impact of the words, especially since it’s fairly obvious a bit gets lost in translation. When the Blu-ray lands it will definitely be worth it to simply sit through the film with the sound muted. Of course, you’ll miss the score, which samples both Chinese and Western classical music to emphasize the clash of tradition and changing world that the film is attempting to express.
It’s unfortunate that the US version is not the film we should be receiving. As it stands what you can see in theaters is a destroyed work of art, cut up and dissected so that it comes across as the movie they thought we could understand better because we’re stupid or something. However, seeing any version of this film on the big screen is better than not seeing it at all. It’s possible that the Chinese or festival cut will come on the eventual home release and then we’ll all get to see the original and judge if Wong was truly able to grasp the massive ideas and themes he was attempting to. Until then we’ll just have to live with a flawed masterpiece.
