What's Your Style?

“What’s your style?”
The Grandmaster
Directed by Wong Kar Wai
A review by
Ernest M. Whiteman III

I usually peg on pretty quickly which movie has become my favorite for the year the instant I walk out of the theater. The movie has to engross me with its story and characters, it needs to thrill me with its innovation, it needs to inspire me to make my own movies and it needs to have me grinning like a fool just thinking about it as I walk out of the theater and long afterwards.

The Grandmaster, the latest film from Wong Kar Wai, did just that. In a sea of same-looking blockbusters that did nothing but take the money from your pocket, “The Grandmaster” offered a unique visual style, keen action sequences and a touching love story at the heart of its non-linear narrative.

I know, I know, Donnie Yen, Badass, blah, blah, blah. “The Grandmaster” elevates itself by not playing to the pretense of a kung fu movie but by being a movie about kung fu. Styles are discussed and displayed, how these styles reflect the philosophies of how the practitioners live and use their martial arts is reflected by the character conflicts within the broken narratives.

The great Tony Leung (In the Mood for Love, Hard-Boiled, Red Cliff I & II) takes the role of Ip Man, a renowned master in the fighting form of Wing Chung, is selected to display the Southern Style of kung fu before the Northern Grandmaster, who is not portrayed as a rival or an enemy. Instead of a huge fight, which we would have gotten with the Donnie Yen series, we get a philosophical showdown between to competing masters with Ip showing how his flexibility in form matches his flexibility in philosophy and life. Seeing his vision for kung fu limits, the Grandmaster cedes his title to Ip Man.

In revenge for defeating her father, Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, House of Flying Daggers) challenges Ip Man to a duel to regain, not only her father’s honor, but also the honor of their house and kung fu philosophy. In a moment of concern, Ip Man loses the duel but sets off a long distance infatuation that spans the rest of their lives. Here, at the core of this movie about kung fu is a story of unrequited attraction – we are in Wong Kar Wai territory now and he makes the story his own.

Most audiences are satisfied with “balls-to-the-wall” action of modern cinema, the brutality of one person beating another, the show of dominance. Movies are not supposed to try and elevate above that; movies are entertainment, they are not meant to provoke thought but only to give you something to do for a few hours, give you something to cheer. But, “The Grandmaster” elevates the themes of Style of Life/Self above its king fu roots. That is what I loved about it.

We quickly follow Ip Man’s life through the Second World War and his move to Hong Kong to make a living after losing his family’s fortune. Here he reconnects with Gong Er and his desire to see her skills in a rematch are thwarted due to a long-ago promise she made. The film then shifts to Gong Er and of the sacrifices she makes to reclaim her father’s kung fu legacy after his prized student usurps the claim of grandmaster, resulting in her father’s death. What follows is an inspired showdown at a train station as Gong Er “takes” back her family’s legacy. Then, we catch up with Ip Man again as they reunite years later and Gong Er is ready to tell Ip Man how she feels because she cannot do more, the same as Ip. Two people dedicated to their life’s philosophies and cannot move beyond their friendship. We then see why Gong Er cannot do so. Ip Man moves on in his instruction of his students, in voiceover, tells us the ending of Gong Er’s sad story.

In the end, I am sure “The Grandmaster” will not sway many fans of martial arts movies. Many enjoy the harsher films that are about the winning of fights and the razzle-dazzle of awesome fight sequences, when all this is completely counter to the philosophies of kung fu, which is more of a method of self-discipline and control. It is not what martial arts movies diverted kung fu to be, what MMA and UFC diverted kung fu into – the winning of fights, the show of physical dominance over an opponent, all the things counter to what Ip Man, as well as Bruce Lee espoused, both of whom followers of MMA and UFC ironically idolize. Note, I stated, “diverted”, not “perverted”, because in that method of self-control is still a method of building the physical and a system of fighting in self-defense, these indeed are martial arts. The divergence is in how these are used.

Are they used to build your character and how to live a good life or simply to win fights on TV? So, the question Tony Leung as Ip Man asks in the tag of the film should resonate more than many will understand, “What’s your style?”

He is not asking your fighting style. He is asking how did you perceive the movie that came before, as just another martial arts movie that you were disappointed in, or something that touches on something deeper about how you live a life overall? Ip Man sticks to his discipline throughout the film, even in this story’s central attraction to Gong Er. She has fallen in love with him but he is a principled man and the only way he can show affection is to challenge her to a duel, because going further would dishonor himself, his wife, his family and his whole philosophy of self-discipline.

American audiences and filmmakers have never understood the philosophies of martial arts, martial arts movies in particular or Asian cinema in general. Take a look at recent films such as “Cloverfield” and “Pacific Rim” and their utter failure at attaining what Japanese Kaizu films are about. To many, it is about a giant monster destroying a city or a man in a rubber suit crushing miniatures. The Kaizu film began with “Gojira” (Godzilla) and was an allegory on the destructive might and consequences of atomic power, which the Japanese knew first hand. Here, instead we get a might makes right in the destruction of the creatures and that nuclear weapons are the answer.

My best example of this misunderstanding is Zhang Yimou’s “Hero” which many fans love because of the stylized fights, yet many more detest for its seeming approval of dictatorships as a means to peace. This point is sort of apparent because we, as American audiences tend to forget that China still lives under said dictatorship and censors its movies heavily, so a message like that would have to seem apparent. Though, a film like “Hero” still manages to sneak its strongest message in very subtly, so subtly in fact, that its went over practically everyone’s head. That message: a message of self-control gleaned from the self-discipline of martial arts that leads to ultimate peace.

Not about winning or control, but a philosophy of self. That the first Emperor of China realizes this message of self at the cusp of his domination that then renders him a virtual prisoner to his own brutal philosophy of control. Hence the closing shot of him in his throne room, tiny in the frame, a cell of his own making.

Wong’s “The Grandmaster” presents the same philosophy of self in the context of the standard martial arts fighting movie. It is all in the way we see the film. How many movies do that? Leave it for you to interpret? Trusts its audience to see beyond the trappings of its genre? “Pacific Rim” didn’t. Which is why that movie failed for me and why “The Grandmaster” does not.

A couple of things that stood out to me the times I watched “The Grandmaster”. First, when he readies to face the Northern Grandmaster he is tutored by three southern masters, the first is a woman who is a master of Bagua, a circular fighting system. What caught my eye the second time I watched it, was that she had bound feet. Meaning, her feet were broken as a child, bound and fit into slippers. To show that she mastered Bagua despite having bound feet reveals her strength of character and tenacity.

The other thing that really stood out was a scene late in the film that moved me to tears. I did not think it would happen again when I went to see the film a second time, yet when the scene played again, I felt the tears well and was not embarrassed to wipe them away. It moved me, the scene. There is a great heart underneath the veneer of this martial arts movie.

In a summer of many, many huge tent pole films, I find myself saying that Wong Kar Wai’s “The Grandmaster” is the best movie I have seen this year. It has a heart within that it wears openly and asks you to trust it in its questioning of your spirit, what is your style? In doing so, it reveals how you really see cinema. I do not know much about martial arts at all. I have never studied or took part in the training of a particular style. But, thanks to Wong Kar Wai’s “The Grandmaster”, I have a better idea of how kung fu can reflect a Style of Self.

Highly Recommended

2013 Ernest M. Whiteman III