Review: The Grandmaster

Beginning in the 1930s, this is the story of Ip Man (Tony Leung), a martial arts teacher from Foshan, China. Ip Man would go on to (be one of the people to) mentor Bruce Lee in martial arts. However, that’s many years from this film’s interest, which is more to do with the Wing Chun master testing his school’s teachings against that of other schools. Aging grandmaster from the North, Gong Yutian (Wang Qingxiang) wants to find a worthy successor and allows competitors from both North and South, with Ip Man ultimately coming out on top, despite the protestations of Gong Yutian’s daughter Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang). A strange love/hate relationship develops between Ip Man (who is married with kids) and Gong Er, but the latter’s dedication to avenge the death of her father, and the outbreak of second Sino-Japanese War keeps them separated for a while. Cung Le turns up (pretty much out of the sky) to have a memorable fight in the rain with Ip Man, playing a thug. Look out for the seemingly ageless Elvis Tsui (Jinjiang Xu) from “The Seventh Curse” in a minor role, too.

 

There are at least 6 films about the life of Ip Man, and in this 2013 effort, writer/director Wong Kar-Wai (“Chungking Express”, “Fallen Angels”, “Ashes of Time”) decides to have his crack at it, assisted by his co-screenwriters Zou Jingzhi and Xu Haofeng. Having been subjected to some of his work at Uni, I’m definitely not a fan of Wong Kar-Wai (I have more tolerance for him than I do Kenji Mizoguchi, however), and although I understand this film has been long in gestation, I think I had my Ip Man full after the first two Donnie Yen films, which were quite solid. This one’s better than “Ip Man: The Final Fight” with Anthony Wong, but boy is it ever a Wong Kar-Wai film in all the best and worst ways, and it adds absolutely nothing new.

 

The film is as stylish as you’d expect from Wong Kar-Wai. The guy knows how to paint pretty pictures. The opening slow-mo, rain-drenched, black-lit fight is ridiculous, hilarious, pretentious, wanky, pretty much against what I’ve heard about the central character, and…I loved it. Hey, it’s a helluva cool thing to see, in fact the action is really cool throughout, albeit not terribly frequent. However, that part about being against what I’ve learned of the central character, that’s important. I can’t say I really know anything of Ip Man beyond what films tell me, but even the Anthony Wong starring “Ip Man: The Final Fight” tried to present the character as humble, reserved, rather straight-laced etc. The Donnie Yen films certainly did that. Poor Tony Leung tries his best, but because this is a Wong Kar-Wai film, reserved and humble don’t exist in this dojo, Sensei. He plays the role well enough as instructed (and looks dapper as fuck in that hat!), but Leung looks slightly smug throughout, and the character comes off too much like a cool bad arse mofo. While that proves occasionally entertaining, it just doesn’t feel right to me. In fact, the character of Ip Man comes off a little more like the persona of his most famed student, Bruce Lee. It also serves to highlight the director more than the characters or story (or even famed choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping. The fights are cool but far more about the director showing off than even the martial arts choreographer!). Wong Kar-Wai is the cinematic directorial equivalent of what is known in the wrestling industry as a guy who does ‘cool flippy shit’. That is, someone who is all about cool, choreographed moves that don’t necessarily tell an appropriate story in the ring. In fact, it can occasionally work against storytelling.

 

On the plus side, Ziyi Zhang has really developed into a fine actress and is the best thing here. However, the film seems to get side-tracked with her character’s infinitely more interesting story, which is as much of a plus as it is a minus, given this is supposed to be Ip Man’s story. The way Wong Kar-Wai tells Ip Man’s story, the film really would’ve needed to have been at least 4 hours long, so I don’t think all of my problems with this film’s storytelling are to do with the cut version of the film I saw. There’s not that much footage missing (It felt a lot longer than 108 minutes, the US version, even with PAL/NTSC taken into account, so perhaps there’s a third cut of the film available).

 

With more falling snow than in “Everest”, this is exactly the Ip Man film you’d expect from flashy filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai. However, I’ve long since grown tired of seeing Ip Man on the screen, and although sometimes lively, and Ziyi Zhang is excellent, this one doesn’t offer anything particularly necessary or new. It starts well, but falls apart after a while, and I’m not sure the cuts to this version of the film, are the entirety of the problem. After all, it tells the same story as every other Ip Man film, only not as well as some. Obviously, the director’s fans will like this considerably more than I did. Some of it is undeniably cool, but restraint was what was called for here, and Wong Kar-Wai doesn’t do restraint. Ever.

 

Rating: C+