The Grandmaster: How does Wong Kar-wai make an action movie memorable.
When it comes to action movies, Chinese martial arts films are always worth talking about. First, there was Bruce Lee, who created martial arts film worldwide in the 1940s, and then Jackie Chan, who broke into Hollywood in the mid-1990s with the film Rumble in the Bronx. There has been no shortage of outstanding martial arts actors in China, such as Jet Li, Donnie Yen, and Wu Jing. What makes an action movie so exciting is the action scenes, the flowing action of the actors, the intense process, and the fact that one of the characters is likely to turn around to win the fight in the end, are all the elements that hold the audience’s attention. However, I don’t know if some of the audience will feel the same way, as there is always a little emptiness in the heart after watching a fierce fight scene, as opposed to the extreme visual enjoyment. This feeling is always accompanied by the fact that I have watched one action movie after another, such as the 007 series, the Mission impossible series in western countries， and the Wolf Warriors series in China. Until Wong Kar-wai’s film, The Grandmaster appeared.
In most films, the characters are portrayed according to the needs of the plot, while in Wong Kar-wai’s films, the plot serves the characters. As Wong Kar-wai’s first martial arts film, The Grandmaster’s style remains consistent with his other works. The most obvious thing about his films is that they are sedate. The rare characters that yell out are also designed to reflect the protagonist’s or the character’s breakdown. Because of this, most of the characters in the film have an elegant and detached temperament, which gives the whole film a strong artistic flavor. In the film The Grandmaster, Wong Kar-wai reflects his romantic feelings of literature and art in three ways.
First of all, close-ups are inserted in slow motion in a large number of fights, which enables the audience to enjoy the visual enjoyment brought by martial arts fights while feeling the inner emotions of different characters. Second, is to do simple things complicated (it may be in the film and television art effect will have some controversy, but it is still reasonable), IP Man (Tony Leung) is the leading role of the film, during the period of the Republic of China, he is a martial grandmaster with rich philosophy thoughts of the patriots. His philosophical remarks run through much of the film. He has, for example, derived from Ivan Petrovich Pavlov’s famous quote: “Martial arts know no borders, but martial artists know no borders.”
Third, use meaningful lines and appropriate background music. With its choice of background music, the film largely matches the needs of The Times and the story. One scene shows IP Man sitting at a table looking at his beloved Lady Gong years later, with the background music being Stefano Lentini-Stabat Mater, which has created a feeling of an old Republic Record. Without any dialogue, the performance of the actors is almost static, but under the rendering of background music, the love feelings of the two leading characters are displayed incisively and vividly. On the actor’s lines, most characters in this film express their ideas in a metaphorical way, even if it may make some audiences have a bad understanding of the film, but through the continuous weighing and considering the characters and their lines, the audience will have a great aftertaste of the ideas that the film expressed.
Of course, there’s a lot to ponder about this movie on mise en scene. For example, as seemingly decent characters try to dissuade Lady Gong from taking revenge on the Japanese lackey, the character is followed by a blurred Japanese flag. For example, Wong Kar-wai used a large number of projections of Buddha in the film to reflect the inner hesitation and helplessness of the characters. In my opinion, a good action movie must be driven by wonderful confrontation scenes and reasonable storylines. But Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmaster also showed that the romantic portrayal of the film’s characters would make the martial arts films warmer and more memorable.
