What’s the common thread uniting our slate of contemporary, prestige action films? I’d categorize it as “unflinching brutality.” TheJohn Wickfranchise may represent this impulse’s mainstream apex, but you’re able to also see the kind of action work I’m talking about taking shape and calcifying inThe Raid, key sequences inCaptain America: The Winter Soldier,Extraction,The Old Guard, andBirds of Prey(featuring action assists from, explicitly, theJohn Wickteam) — not to mention off-the-beaten-path DTV and Hong Kong films that don’t permeate American cinema on as wide a scale as these. In pieces of camera coverage both unrelentingly aggressive yet oddly long in timing, we watch actors and stunt performers destroy the absolute stuffing out of each other in perilous detail, the levels of which destruction is inflicted upon the human form heightened and re-heightened to ludicrous yet grounded places (i.e. Chris Hemsworth annihilating a group of literal children). We watch, we cringe, we yelp, we applaud.
All of this makes revisitingCrouching Tiger, Hidden Dragonon 4K blu-ray an absolute breath of fresh air. Don’t get me wrong; I love our current mode of brutal action cinema as much as the next adrenaline junkie. But the 2000Ang Leewuxia epic, both a throwback to classic martial arts cinema and a vital reexamination of its tropes and functions, stuns with its stillness even more so on a contemporary watch.John Wickand its ilk have a certain dance-like quality to their fight sequences, butCrouching Tigeris pure ballet, pure romance, and pure beauty. After constantly being pummeled by beer bottles,Crouching Tigerfeels like a refreshing glass of rosé; all its complicated, intoxicating notes singing even more purely on this new 4K transfer; its evident film grain, ever-changing color palette, and communication of wide contrast in lighting choices melding perfectly with its content.
One year previously, acclaimed fight choreographerYuen Woo-pingblasted his way into the American consciousness with his work onThe Matrix, giving us a fierce but poetic look at how he changed the Hong Kong action cinema scene, introducing us to the elements of wire-fu, fast-and-fluid hand-to-hand combat, and emotion-driven battle subtexts that would allow American audiences to flock as hard as they did toCrouching Tigerone year later. Yet evenThe Matrixfeels like an over-muscular, harder piece of pulverizing filmmaking and fight choreography compared to the lyricism in every physical piece ofCrouching Tiger. Its screenplay, adapted from aWang Dulunovel byWang Hui-ling,James Schamus, andKuo Jung Tsai, is constantly concerned with the fluidity and arguable irrelevance of boundaries, of limitations, even of things we believe to be corporeal objectivities. Everything in the world ofCrouching Tigeris a liminal space to weave through, the enlightenment that comes from philosophical musings and, let’s face it, freakingloveacting as an invisible forcefield through the most stressful of physical challenges. “The things we touch have no permanence,” says Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-fat). “My master would say: there is nothing we can hold onto in this world. Only by letting go can we truly possess what is real.” As such, masters Lee, Yuen, and DPPeter Pauphysicalize these explorations with as little friction as possible, doing their best to fight against the inherent fact that “filming something makes it permanent” by giving space for flow, for ease in interaction, for as effective a communication of “intangibility” as I’ve seen in cinema — all through sequences where people are fighting each other!
None of this is to say you won’t get thrilled by the fight sequences inCrouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, nor are these battles lacking in physical efficacy. When Lee and his team want you to feel the hits, you will feel the hits; a late-picture battle betweenMichelle YeohandZhang Ziyifroze me in its out-of-nowhere intensity this go-around. For all the film’s examinations of the over-prioritization of physical form, this 4K transfer highlights everyone’s weapons, from the pristine clarity of the Green Destiny to the faded, dirty, and overused weapons yielded by various other would-be fighters.
These fight sequences are also all given different physical explorations in shifting filmmaking styles. From shadowy, Steadicam-yielding night fights to brightly lit, quickly cut hand battles to that brilliant, never-been-bested flying tree battle, all gliding camera moves and expressionistic cross-fades, Lee and his team make sure each fight has a demonstrably different flavor, a shift in visual language, a scattering of character status, a rich piece of character-driven subtext, or even an addition of genre (i.e. Zhang’s comical one-handed battle with a bar full of dumb-dumbs versus her romantic “battle” withChang Chen). At the risk of being a broken record, these shifts in style and purpose are so endlessly invigorating especially compared to a modern action film likeJohn Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum; while it is, indeed, fun to watchKeanu Reevessmash and shoot a bunch of baddies over and over again, there ain’t much by way of “differences in film coverage”, let alone the addition of thematic exploration or subtext.
At the end of the day, it’s likely unfair for me to be this grumpy about what action cinema looks like now compared to what it looked like in 2000’sCrouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. After all, the film tells us such hard divisions and labels are arbitrary, full of human folly, and ultimately unreal.Crouching Tigerundoubtedly led toJohn Wick, as this mode of “lyrical” fight choreography undoubtedly led to our modern mode of “brutal” fight choreography. But to revisit this stunning display of physical lyricism conveying cerebral ideals, this endlessly inventive mode of action filmmaking, and this beautiful ballet between love and combat in glorious 4K makes me wonder if such free-flowing identities and definitions can bring us back to this more sensitive mode of action anytime soon. Put it this way: If Keanu Reeves andCarrie-Anne Mosswant to let go and throw some ethereal wuxia classicism into an Agent fight inThe Matrix 4, we will all have achieved our green destiny again.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon20th Anniversary Limited Edition 4K UHD is available now from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
