NRO Weekend, February 3-4, 2001
Ang Lee’s Little Masterpiece
Believe the hype: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is marvelous.

By Ben Domenech, NRO contributing editor

efore praising Ang Lee's latest masterpiece, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, let us stop for a moment and consider Lee's biography: He is 46 years old, a graduate of NYU, a man who only began making movies in the last ten years. Lee is the mind behind such small but critically acclaimed foreign films as Eat Drink Man Woman, Pushing Hands, and The Wedding Banquetall stories about relationships in and around Asian families. Critical praise praised the films as being "poignant," "charming," and "playful."

Then Lee came West, making three films that seemed worlds apart from his earlier work: Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, and Ride With the Devil. The leap — from sweet family dramas to Jane Austen, '70s angst, and pop singer Jewel as a Civil War-era love interest, all in the space of four years — was a little unexpected. But critics still liked what they saw, and now, with considerable justification, they described Lee's artistic range as "unique," "singular," and "superlative."

It is likely that you have already read a review of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in some other forum. In fact, it is altogether likely that you have seen more than one review by the same author. Critics are spouting off about this film like nothing else in the neighborhood cineplex. What, it seems far to ask, has Ang Lee accomplished that we should devote such amounts of ink and dead trees to analyzing his creation?

There are two reasons that the critics are in a tizzy over this film. The first is, rather than peaking early and dying off, or being ignored entirely (a perfectly respectable death for a foreign film), Crouching Tiger has been steadily growing in popularity since the day it was released, climbing up the box-office charts with remarkable stubbornness. This week the film stands at No. 6 (up from No. 8 last week) in terms of ticket sales, with a total of nearly $50 million to its name in theater profits. This despite the fact that the film is currently showing on only 869 screens — many fewer than the movie at No. 5, the idiotic cheerleader crime-spree movie Sugar and Spice, which ran on more than 2,150 screens during its first week of release. Not only that, but Crouching Tiger also just became the most successful foreign film in Britain, knocking off the previous record-holder, Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful.

This type of slow but steady success points to one thing: word of mouth. The first people who went to see this film were the loyalists — the fans of kung fu, of Ang Lee, and of stars Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-Fat (whom a Washington Post headline rightly dubbed, "The Coolest Man Alive"). The cult-level praise for this film has gradually spread to the masses, and Crouching Tiger has rapidly become a populist draw.

I have a sneaky suspicion that the second reason for all the critical attention is that film critics do not know quite what to make of this movie. They know they like what they see, but seem to have trouble getting a firm grasp on the meaning of the film or its complex storyline, and end up making genre comparisons that don't fit somehow: Ebert is reminded of Jackie Chan, The New Yorker's reviewer talks of Bruce Lee, the LA Times critic mentions Jet Li. Online reviewers have perhaps gotten closer to the mark, comparing the film's combination of martial arts, Asian culture, and epic landscape to the cutscenes from a Final Fantasy game. Regardless, it seems that Crouching Tiger will supply critics and film-school students with material for some time.

Ang Lee's story is far too complex to spell out in the space of a review, so I'll instead note just a few things of importance. For one, "crouching tiger, hidden dragon" is a phrase from an old Chinese myth. It refers to hiding one's strength from others until the moment of attack — advice that is certainly followed by the characters in the film.

Crouching Tiger begins quietly, with Yo-Yo Ma's exquisite cello flitting in the background, but before you know it, Lee has led you into a land of epic storytelling, of heroes and villains, of swords and quests, of betrayal and blood feuds — and, as you probably have noticed from the previews, a world made fantastically independent of the laws of physics.

The film's central character is Jen (Zhang Ziyi), the young, lovely princess who is coming into her own. Jen clashes with the two heroes of the tale, Li Mu Bai (Yun-Fat) and his beloved, Yu Shu Lien (Yeoh), as the two seek to bring a murderous sorceress to justice and restore a magical sword to its rightful place. It is a tragic and compelling tale, one that has the time-tested, burnished feel of the stories that are told again and again to children.

The (much praised) battle scenes in Crouching Tiger are as rhythmic and graceful as a dance. Every parry is a part of the ballet, the flash of cold steel an element of a deadly pas de deaux. The majority of the fights feature the women, not the men, and compared to the faux-feminism of Charlie's Angels (girls can kick butt only while wearing leather and sequins), these female warriors seem wonderfully real, their gravity-defying abilities notwithstanding. Regardless of gender, when these heroes scale the heights of mountains, walls, and treetops, you can't help but be drawn into their quest.

Ang Lee has presented us with a gorgeous work of art, one that reverently follows the conventions of its genre without being hemmed in by them. This film is, in a word, terrific.