'The Grandmaster' Movie Review: A Sloppy and Dramatically Inert Biopic With a Strong Turn From Ziyi Zhang & an Abundance of Visual Panache and Pageantry
Ip Man, the notable grandmaster who popularized Wing Chun and taught Bruce Lee, has recently been portrayed in cinema by a number of filmmakers since 2010. Wong Kar-wai's "The Grandmaster" is the one carrying the greatest buzz after a solid run in China and a number of re-edits including a recent version released by The Weinstein Company with new footage that was never showcased in other iterations of the project. Unfortunately, the constant re-edits have clearly taken their toll on the project and have created an erratic and unbalanced product.
Ip Man (played by Tony Leung) is living a rather peaceful existence in Southern China until the Northern Kung Fu guru Gong Yutian (Qingxiang Wang) announces his retirement and goes South to take on the Southern region's top master. The Southern gurus eventually decide upon Ip Man and the two engage in a battle of wits. Yutian loses, but his daughter Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang) decides to fight for her father's honor and battles Ip Man to preserve her lineage's undefeated streak. The remainder of the film follows the two character's subsequent lives after their fateful meeting.
The film's first half moves in linear fashion with a slow build-up to Yutian and Ip Man's philosophical confrontation. Along the way, viewers are presented with numerous showcases of Kung Fu styles and teachings that immerse the viewer in the world despite often coming off as convoluted and confusing. This narrative moves seamlessly from one confrontation to another until it peaks at the Yutian-Ip confrontation. However, once this comes to an end, Wong tops it with a tense battle between Er and Ip Man. As the battle unravels, the emotions between the two characters grow stronger and the viewer feels the anticipation of a budding love and admiration. The ensuing montage features their exchange of letters and adds to this anticipation. However, after this montage the film takes a turn for the worst.
Through Ip Man's voice over and title cards, Wong tells the viewer that the second World War has forced the martial artist to Hong Kong to restart his life away from his family. Unfortunately, the remainder of the film plays out in this manner with minimal scenes showcasing Ip Man actually making decisions and taking actions. In fact, the promising guru of the first half becomes little more than a one-dimensional puppet. He tells us that he has gained a reputation as a top fighter, but the film only shows him take down a few untrained students at a school. The viewer never gets a chance to see the psychological impact of living away from his family or the hardships of poverty that he must endure. The viewer is told that his school is advancing and prospering, but the information is portrayed through montages that add little to the actual voice-over and ultimately feel superfluous. Ip Man confronts a few other Grandmasters during these sequences but the battles lack any tension or discernible stakes. The result is a rather plodding experience that drags along without any sense of direction.
In fact, most of the film suffers from a hollow feeling, including the opening battle. Ip Man is facing off with a bunch of other guys in the streets, but the reasons for the fight are unimportant; this deflates the tension and makes the fight come off as empty. It does a solid job of setting the scene and the world, but it lacks any real sense of purpose. The sense of importance picks up when Ip Man prepares to take on Yutian, but the action feels less like the part of a drama and more like a ceremonial procedure.
The film's heart and soul comes in the form of Zhang's Er. Unlike Ip Man and the other males in the story, she acts on emotional impulse and drive. While the men seem to fight out of ceremony and pride, her desire to defeat Ip Man stems from the love for her father and her kin. In the second half of the film, she avenges her father's death. This part of the film is easily the most riveting and the only one with powerful emotional stakes. Zhang's performance is up to the task as she develops her character from an indignant youth to a tragic heroine that grows more and more fragile as the film progresses.
Leung is unable to match the gravitas of Zhang's performance and often comes off as inert and expressionless in latter sections of the film.
Visually the film pulls out all the stops with a vibrant color palette and an endlessly varied shot selection that captures the action from every angle possible. The battle sequences are stunningly choreographed and feature an endless array of new moves that never stops surprising the viewer. However, the visual panache slowly starts to feel like superfluous clutter in the context of the dramatically inert script. The constant extreme close-ups in slow motion during the fight sequences take away from the elegant choreography. However, the most detrimental and distracting of the visual pyrotechnics is the constant shifts in frame rate throughout; this particular technique comes off as jarring and unnecessary.
Lovers of martial arts cinema will undoubtedly find a great deal to admire, especially Zhang's riveting performance that gives this rather icy film a powerfully beating heart. However, the ultimate result is a sloppy cinematic experience that seems to be in search of an identity that becomes more and more elusive as it moves toward its anticlimactic finale.