She has surpassed Jade Fox in skill, and she’s the one who has stolen the Green Destiny. It’s the Princess Jen! She’s been secretly studying martial arts. It’s not until a big showdown between them that a mysterious female warrior appears with the Green Destiny. When a thief steals the famous sword Green Destiny, Mu Bai and Shu Lien trace the theft erroneously to Jade Fox. Jade Fox has been posing as Jen’s governess for years. There is a pair of young lovers, Jen the daughter of a high ranking official, and Lo, a handsome desert bandit.įinally, there is Jade Fox, a former pupil of Mu Bai the swordsman. There is a mature pair, the master swordsman Mu Bai and a professional woman bodyguard named Shu Lien, who have long been repressing their strong feelings for each other. Our story involves five principal characters. Here’s a synopsis of the documentary adapted from Wikipedia. The screenplay is by Hui Ling Wang, based on the 1935 Chinese Wǔxiá romance by Wáng Dù Lú. The Roundtablers soar this week into Ang Lee’s 2003 “Wung-fu” Action + Society mashup Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the story of a secret young woman warrior and her attempts to be free of all her masters. But there’s probably only one who could also ride a motorcycle onto a moving train.Editor Roundtable: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragonĭownload the Math of Storytelling Infographic Of course, you could easily name plenty of other actresses capable of that degree of subtlety. She also gives you the sense that Shu Lien is measuring the width of the chasm between duty and longing, unsure if she can safely leap across, fearing she might fall into its depths. There’s wistfulness there, and a kind of cautious joy. Every time he enters her orbit, her expression shifts subtly, betraying not just three or four mixed emotions but shades of a thousand. But she may be even better in the movie’s quieter moments: Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai have been close for years, but circumstances prevent them from becoming romantically involved. In Crouching Tiger, Yeoh gets plenty of chances to soar over rooftops and to spar with adversaries, her determination almost visibly coursing through her veins and her muscles. In addition to her breathtaking physical grace, she has always had, and still has, a movie-star face in the old-fashioned sense of the word-the camera revels in it. Movies like those made Yeoh a star in Asia, and it’s easy to see why. And an actor who can’t be easily categorized is far more likely to slip through the cracks.Ĭhan Kam Chuen-Sony Pictures/Everett Collection And because Yeoh, in particular, is so terrific in both the action scenes and the dramatic ones, she automatically had at least one strike against her: in addition to the fact that circa the early 2000s Hollywood barely knew what to do with terrific Asian performers-a pattern that’s only now beginning to change-Yeoh was simply too good at too many things. Though Crouching Tiger, produced overseas, became the highest-grossing foreign-language film in American history, its success seemed to be linked to its achievement as an action spectacle-an admittedly glorious one-rather than to the equally spectacular appeal of its stars. And here may lie the key to why it took so long for Yeoh to become a star in the United States. But those who have loved her for years (including, clearly, Everything’s directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) aren’t surprised that Hollywood is finally recognizing her as a star-even as we’re rolling our googly eyes over why it took so long.Ĭrouching Tiger, in addition to featuring a number of astonishing martial arts sequences-many of them enhanced by traditional wuxia wirework, which creates the illusion that characters are floating through air-is built around two love stories: That of Jen and sexy bad-boy desert warrior Lo (Chang Chen), and the more muted current of desire connecting Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai. As far as the Academy is concerned, Yeoh is a sixtyish newcomer. The performance has earned Yeoh an Academy Award nomination, most likely not because her martial arts moves are magnificent (she has always done most of her own stunts), but because she brings such a complex swirl of anxious gravity to her character. In the Daniels’ existential action fantasy Everything Everywhere All at Once, Yeoh plays Evelyn, the stressed-out owner of a laundry facility who’s transported into a complex multiverse where she becomes an action hero. To movie lovers who are also fans of the Hong Kong films of the 1990s, commonly recognized as that industry’s golden age, Michelle Yeoh’s recent Hollywood rise isn’t particularly surprising some of us have grown long white Pai Mei-style beards waiting for it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |