"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" is a film directed by Ang Lee, released in 2000 and starring Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi and Zhang Zhen. The film won four awards at the 73rd Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Art Direction, Best Original Score and Best Cinematography. As a non-English Chinese commercial film, it is a great honor to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. When the film was released in North America, the box office exceeded 120 million US dollars, becoming the first foreign language film in American film history to exceed 100 million US dollars. The final global box office total was $205 million. From this aspect, we can also see the popularity of the film in the West.
The film is a martial arts type film, and the fighting scenes occupy a considerable amount of space in the film, and the fighting paragraphs of the film are not unremarkable. The fights in the film maintain a "realism under moderate imagination", such as the knife edge when Yu Xiulian and Yu Jiaolong faced off, and the fights that are not exaggerated for the sake of expressing strength, as well as fantasy elements such as "pointing a hole in the air" avoid. In comparison, such martial arts should be regarded as "medium and low demons". Under such a framework, Ang Lee maintains a strong sense of presence and realism, but at the same time makes these martial arts have a Zen aesthetic, which is actually very difficult.
Whether it is swords, guns, sticks or flying over walls, Li An actually arranges a different texture and tone for each martial arts and each confrontation. The fight of the martial arts people against the blue-eyed fox is to win. In Yu Jiaolong's battle, he tried his best, and the focus was on winning or losing, while the duel between Li Mubai and Yu Jiaolong was more about ideas than wins and losses, and focused on artistic conception.
These scenes are obviously smarter and more engaging than the seemingly cool but cookie-cutter fights in some films. After talking about martial arts, let’s talk about literary drama. What's a little strange is that there are some lines in the film that Chinese people are not very familiar with, such as "time and space does not exist", "the sadness of annihilation", "I have always loved you deeply", and these seem to be nothing special. It is necessary, or it can be expressed implicitly in Chinese-style lines, but the film is quite straightforward, and it can be seen that the script of the film is more Western.
Another interesting point is that although after watching "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", I feel that the plot is fairly simple, but it seems that there is no way to directly summarize it in one sentence. This is actually because the clues that the film tells are relatively discrete.
In the film, there are lines in which Yu Jiaolong and Li Mubai snatch Qingming Sword, Yu Xiulian and Li Mubai's love line, Yu Jiaolong's resistance line for freedom, Yu Jiaolong and Luo Xiaohu's love line, and Yu Xiulian's sister line, etc. Wait, it seems that none of them is absolutely larger than the other and becomes the main line independently. At first glance, although it is easy to follow the clues of the film, when I want to capture the theme, I feel a little confusing.
I watched "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" about 3 times. The first time I watched it, I was very young. I just remember that I felt very sad after watching it, but I couldn't explain why. In the end, Yu Jiaolong's jumping off the cliff was actually quite an unexpected move, but even though it was unexpected consciously, it seemed a bit credible in the subconscious and emotionally, and it was understandable that Yu Jiaolong did so.
And this hazy indescribable mood I always remember. It was only when I came back at a certain age that I found out that there are actually a lot of details and subtexts in the film, suggesting some character relationships under the surface story, and these parts may be the key. For example, the seemingly ambiguous but hostile relationship between Li Mubai and Yu Jiaolong, or why Yu Jiaolong suddenly got angry after hearing that she had been assigned to Luo Xiaohu at the security guard, saying that he had been betrayed and that he had to duel with Yu Xiulian, This is actually the original arrangement of the film creators (what Yu Jiaolong has been fighting against is being arranged and controlled). The story is a tragedy. Although Li Mubai and Yu Xiulian are in love with each other, due to social evaluation and their friend Meng Sizhao, no one is willing to reveal it. They seem to follow social rules and responsibilities, but miss their own happiness.
At the end of the story, Li Mubai confessed to Yu Xiulian with the last breath that he could have been able to refine the spirit and return the emptiness. He said that I had missed this life. He lived his whole life out of responsibility, accepted apprentices, eliminated violence, and took revenge. In the end, he never confessed to the person he loved the most. He felt a little regretful. So at the last moment of his life, he thought to cherish the moment, and expressed his heart to Yu Xiulian. And Yu Xiulian also understood this in an instant. After Li Mubai died, she told Yu Jiaolong, who came over, to treat herself with sincerity, in fact, to let her live her life according to her heart, because Yu Xiulian spent her whole life for responsibility, but in the end she failed. Such an ending.
Yu Jiaolong is a character who is unwilling to follow social responsibilities and wants to pursue freedom. She doesn't want to be an ordinary woman, she doesn't want to get married, she wants to be a knight who walks the rivers and lakes. So she falls in love with Luo Xiaohu, steals swords, runs away from marriage, and does whatever she wants. She was not afraid of heaven and earth, but in the end she found that the result of her pursuit of freedom was to bring her an ending like a rootless grass. The freedom she sought did not bring her happiness.
So the story discussed is a story of inner freedom and responsibility constraints. Speaking of which, Li Mubai is actually more like Yu Jiaolong. Deep down they are people who want to pursue freedom. It's just that Li Mubai is an adult version of Yu Jiaolong. After years of life, he understands that he must follow the rules of society, while Yu Jiaolong has not been baptized by society. Yu Xiulian and Luo Xiaohu are similar, they think more about the rules of society. For example, Yu Xiulian, because of Lord Yu and Lord Baylor, clearly knew Yu Jiaolong's identity but did not reveal it. And Luo Xiaohu obviously could travel the world with Yu Jiaolong, but he sent her back, saying that he would marry Yu Jiaolong openly after a career.
However, whether it was Yu Jiaolong, Li Mubai, Luo Xiaohu and Yu Xiulian, none of them got their wish at the end of the story. The film ends with a description of this sighing paradox. Those who pursue freedom will find that social responsibility is important, because the pursuit of freedom will lead to loneliness. However, those who pursue social responsibility find that, for the sake of responsibility, they may miss the person they truly love and the moment to express their hearts to them. I guess that's the complexity of the film's subject matter. In fact, it does not clearly state that freedom should be pursued or social responsibility should be observed, but it leaves a question for the audience to discuss.
The bamboo forest in the film is actually quite ambiguous. Director Ang Lee himself used the word "disturbed emotion" when he mentioned this story. And because this sentence came out of the director's mouth, plus Li Mubai poked his forehead with his finger, Yu Jiaolong closed his eyes, and later in the cave, Li Mubai performed his work to Yu Jiaolong, who was soaking wet, the film wanted to show the quality of the scene. The ambiguous relationship between Li Mubai and Yu Jiaolong should be relatively certain.
But the question is, how to interpret it? And how to reconcile Li Mubai's deep love for Yu Xiulian? Maybe you can think about it this way: In fact, Li Mubai and Yu Jiaolong admire each other deep down. In the plot, they all use Wudang swordsmanship, and martial arts tend to be smart and elegant in Taoism. Yu Xiulian's martial arts tend to be practical and positive, with a more Confucian feel. Yu Jiaolong should like Li Mubai in the end, because when he was with Luo Xiaohu at the end, there were tears in his eyes, and he seemed to want to confirm and then be disappointed. Li Mubai admired Yu Jiaolong, and he thought he could accept her as his apprentice, but this feeling had some buds, but it did not develop further.
The mischievous Li An buried many particularly delicate triangles in the story. For example, Yu Xiulian said that she could not kill Yu Jiaolong, and Wu Ma said that Li Mubai could, but Yu Xiulian just sighed after hearing it. And when Li Mubai was performing his kung fu, Yu Xiulian came in and saw a lonely man and a widow, and there was a subtle feeling similar to catching a rape. Ang Lee buried these careful thoughts in the story, and you can pay special attention to it when watching the film. Regarding the ending of the film, why Yu Jiaolong jumped in the end is actually related to what Li Mubai said at the beginning of the story. Li Mubai said that he had attained the Tao. Since he was a Wudang faction, he should pursue the "ultimate freedom" that Taoism wanted. But he said that he had no joy, but was surrounded by a silent sadness. And this is actually Yu Jiaolong's final state of mind. After everything was shattered, Yu Jiaolong came to Wudang Mountain, and after spending a night with Luo Xiaohu, he found that he could never regain the feeling he had before. She finds that everything she once was can't come back.
She pursues freedom and struggles with social responsibility, but she is surrounded by "dead sadness". On Wudang Mountain, as a romantic who pursues freedom, Yu Jiaolong wanted to confirm one last time. She asked Xiaohu the last question, and Xiaohu answered her very realistically and went back to Xinjiang together. Yu Jiaolong understood that the freedom she wanted to pursue did not exist in this world. So she jumped up and down.
Luo Xiaohu once told Yu Jiaolong the story of "a sincere heart leads to a spirit", jumping off a mountain, if her heart is sincere, the gods will grant her one wish. In Yu Jiaolong's heart, half of this jump is a kind of desperate suicide in the world, and the other half is a kind of prayer in the spiritual world for "the sincerity of the heart".
As for her wish, is she wanting everything to start over? What happened after she jumped off? Or can the wish come true? The handling of the film here is a poetic openness.
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