B | Rival schools of kung fu vie for supremacy amidst the Japanese invasion of China and the Chinese civil war. Directed by Wong Kar-wai Starring Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi Review by Jon Kissel |
Wong Kar-wai, master of the slow-burn romance, can no longer ignore his Hong Kong roots in The Grandmaster, a film that surrounds Wong’s signature unrequited romances with the wire-fu style of Hong Kong action cinema. Sold as a biopic of Ip Man, the eventual trainer of Bruce Lee, The Grandmaster is only tangentially concerned with him, such that his children die off-screen. In Wong’s vision, Ip Man isn’t a complicated man, albeit one who makes the uncomplicated look incredible. Instead, Wong broadens his focus for a consideration of 20th century China and all the tumult it experienced during the first half of Ip Man’s life. The Grandmaster illuminates little of Ip Man, starting as it does at a point when he’s already an expert at Wing Chun kung fu. Its greater success is Wong’s technical perfection in the service of a national metaphor about collective destruction.
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