Review of The Grandmaster (2013)
Seen in 2018.
Martial arts drama. I like the painterly compositions. I dislike the near-total omission of communism, the clinical action sequences that grow less imaginative and less significant as the narrative proceeds through history, and the dull personal moral polarization and romance. It seems to me that if Wong wanted to invoke wuxia he should have taken as a premise that wizardly martial artists are as powerful as the fights make them appear, in which case they will also be politically relevant to each new regime. Instead, Ip Man fades away in Hong Kong, a suddenly realistic teacher.