The trailer for Wong Kar-Wai's The Grandmasters ...
is out ... and I don't quite know what to make of it. Of course, this being a Wong Kar-Wai movie, we won't know what to make of it until the movie is released (and even so, consider Ashes of Time Redux). The trailer follows very much the tropes of martial arts movies (intense zooming shot toward the protagonist, action shots).
But this being Wong Kar-Wai, we can't expect him to follow the tropes of martial arts movies (I'm including kung fu, wushu and wuxia movies in the same category for simplicity's sake), where the protagonist(s) rises up against tyranny/corruption to restore the Heavenly Mandate. And often times, this tyranny/corruption theme will have a foreign aspect and so the movie will have some nationalistic/jingoistic resonance. Just think of Jet Li's Fearless or Donnie Yen's Ip Man and Ip Man 2, where Huo Yuanjia fights against the British, Belgian, Spanish and Japanese invaders (for the former) and Ip Man fights against the Japanese invaders in World War II, followed by the British colonial administration of Hong Kong. Even the more recent sensualist martial arts movies (Hero (hello, Christopher Doyle), Red Cliff, House of a Thousand Daggers, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) follow this pattern. This is especially prevalent in movies produced in mainland China.
On the other hand, Wong Kar-Wai's previous martial arts movie, Ashes of Time, is slow and introspective. There are no flashy scenes of action. There are lot of panoramic shots (a trait I think Wong Kar-Wai shares with the Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kitano). The protagonists talk a lot and they are broken.
Tony Leung Chiu-Wai doesn't really have a background in martial arts. He had a short role in Hero, where he did a lot of talking, played in Ashes of Time, and played the role of Zhou Yu in John Woo's Red Cliff, who was best known as a strategist. So many we can expect a similar paced movie to Ashes of Time. I don't know what to say about Ip Man (the character played by Tony Leung), beyond what I saw in the Donnie Yen movies, that he was Bruce Lee's teacher, a policeman in Foshan and a member of the Kuomingtang.
But here is what I am getting from the trailer. Gone are the lush colors of Christopher Doyle's photography. This is the second movie Wong Kar-Wai does without him (the previous one was the really disappointing My Blueberry Nights, which felt like a Wong Kar-Wai greatest hits, including the ersatz Christopher Doyle photography). You'll find those colors replaced with a stark contrast between black and white hues. We know color plays an important part in Wong Kar-Wai's work (see ... well, pretty much all his movies, except My Blueberry Nights). But again, I can't say how this will work out in The Grandmasters.
But this being Wong Kar-Wai, we can't expect him to follow the tropes of martial arts movies (I'm including kung fu, wushu and wuxia movies in the same category for simplicity's sake), where the protagonist(s) rises up against tyranny/corruption to restore the Heavenly Mandate. And often times, this tyranny/corruption theme will have a foreign aspect and so the movie will have some nationalistic/jingoistic resonance. Just think of Jet Li's Fearless or Donnie Yen's Ip Man and Ip Man 2, where Huo Yuanjia fights against the British, Belgian, Spanish and Japanese invaders (for the former) and Ip Man fights against the Japanese invaders in World War II, followed by the British colonial administration of Hong Kong. Even the more recent sensualist martial arts movies (Hero (hello, Christopher Doyle), Red Cliff, House of a Thousand Daggers, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) follow this pattern. This is especially prevalent in movies produced in mainland China.
On the other hand, Wong Kar-Wai's previous martial arts movie, Ashes of Time, is slow and introspective. There are no flashy scenes of action. There are lot of panoramic shots (a trait I think Wong Kar-Wai shares with the Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kitano). The protagonists talk a lot and they are broken.
Tony Leung Chiu-Wai doesn't really have a background in martial arts. He had a short role in Hero, where he did a lot of talking, played in Ashes of Time, and played the role of Zhou Yu in John Woo's Red Cliff, who was best known as a strategist. So many we can expect a similar paced movie to Ashes of Time. I don't know what to say about Ip Man (the character played by Tony Leung), beyond what I saw in the Donnie Yen movies, that he was Bruce Lee's teacher, a policeman in Foshan and a member of the Kuomingtang.
But here is what I am getting from the trailer. Gone are the lush colors of Christopher Doyle's photography. This is the second movie Wong Kar-Wai does without him (the previous one was the really disappointing My Blueberry Nights, which felt like a Wong Kar-Wai greatest hits, including the ersatz Christopher Doyle photography). You'll find those colors replaced with a stark contrast between black and white hues. We know color plays an important part in Wong Kar-Wai's work (see ... well, pretty much all his movies, except My Blueberry Nights). But again, I can't say how this will work out in The Grandmasters.
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