In conjunction with the Open Your City campaign, Heineken London have been giving the masses a chance to experience some of the best films with exclusive pre screenings at a Picturehouse Cinema and I had a chance to attend one of these exclusive experiences in the shape of the film Grandmaster.
Heineken laid on a couple of free beers and some gourmet popcorn by Joe and Sephs (very nice) to set the mood-(for more details of the exclusive experiences brought to you by Heineken London go to Heineken Star Treatment).
The film written and directed by the brilliant Wong Kai Wai is a biopic detailing the life of the (Ip Man) a grandmaster who went on to teach Bruce Lee so I was expecting a high adrenaline fight fest but then I come from that mould of a martial artist fan that loves films like the awesome Raid 2011.
Truth be told, The Grandmaster written and directed by the brilliant Wong Kai Wai and starring the known names of Tony Leung-Caution and Lust 2007 and the martial art beauty of Zhang Ziyi- Memoirs of a Geisha 2005 and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon 2000 is far from the high octane energy of the Raid-don’t get me wrong there are fight scenes but its more ballet than bone crunching, it’s more Crouching Tiger without precarious feats of balancing on the edge of a small leave.
The opening fight scene which appears to take some inspiration from that last scene in the Matrix Revolutions 2003 where Neo fights Agent Smith in the rain surrounded by his clones is highly stylised. In The Grandmaster we are encouraged to revel in the beauty of the moves rather than wince. Once I stopped to take in the beauty I found myself warming to the stylised fight scenes and appreciating that Wong wants his audience to appreciate karate from a totally different perspective-dare I say he wants that Hollywood pastiche of karate to be far away from his viewer’s minds.
Ip Man (Tony Leung), as our main protagonist narrates us with a warmness that is engaging through this epic drama spanning pre-Second Sino Japanese War right through to the 50s. The film’s themes of love (seen in the relationship with Ip Man And Gong Er), revenge and war are prevalent but it is of course karate which is the central theme/backdrop. Through Ip Man we explore these themes but also importantly understand karate and its history in China as more than a martial art but as a microcosm of the issues that affected modern day China. In the film South and North forms of karate fight for the ultimate supremacy in a battle engineered by the North’s Wadung grandmaster Gong Yutian despite the protests of his daughter Gong Er played by Zhang Ziyi.
Ip Man as the greatest South martial artists (as voted for in a democratic process) proceeds to win the contest. Despite the loss the spectre of looming discontent leading to the war, the strict code of respect for an opponent entrenched in the ethics of karate and the never consecrated love affair between Ip Man and Gong Er a form of a unity between North and South. While war rages on splitting the two potential lovers from ever consecrating their love we travel with Ip Man as he loses his family and must fight to stay alive as a man without the trappings of a privileged life he once had.
The film at 130 minutes is probably just the right length as any longer and it probably would have been like flogging a dead horse. There are some beautiful moments particularly with Gong Er in her final scenes with Ip Man where she declares her love. Now twenty years on and hooked on opium I found myself fully engaged by Going Er and wishing that she could have fulfilled her potential as a martial artist rather than having to accept that then certainly martial arts was a bastion of males. Her eventual suicide through an opium haze definitely pulls at the heart strings.
While The Grandmaster is interesting and there are some nice touches I can’t help feeling that after that amount of time I did not really learn that much about Ip Man which I guess was the whole reason d’etre. Despite following him through his life I can’t help feeling that what I did learn I could have found out with a fair google search. It feels as if the film was caught between fulfilling its need to show karate against a film that was about the life of a real man-I really wanted more depth. This subsequently leads to a film that does not quite (for me) achieve its main objective which is to detail this amazing and influential grandmaster.
While there were some nice touches and it was enjoyable, like Ip Man and Gong Er’s love affair-it promised much but was never quite fulfilled.
