The Grandmaster (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Grandmaster (2013) -- K.-W. Wong

Wong Kar Wai’s movies typically emphasise style and mood over substance and The Grandmaster is no exception.  Although I usually steer away from kung fu movies featuring stunts on wires and digital manipulation of the image, this film, where each frame seems a fully composed painting of its own, made the artificiality somehow acceptable.  I can see how using modern techniques can also lend themselves to a beautiful work of art.  However, the story, which follows Ip Man (Tony Leung) who eventually became Bruce Lee’s master from the 1930s until the 1960s, is disjointed at best.  Equal time is granted to Zhang Ziyi playing Gong Er, his rival and possible love interest – but the tension surrounding their unfulfilled romance seems unnecessarily muted. True, I seem to have wound up with a heavily edited version of the film and this may be part of the problem – but even so, the narrative loses focus in favour of dreamy slow motion shots or dazzlingly stylish fight scenes.  It is easy to forget the significance of the actions at hand.  Nevertheless, it is clear that Wong is an absolute grandmaster himself at the technical wizardry required to create a film – if only he could also keep control of pacing and narrative at the same time.