Recently, Donnie Yen
has once again made martial arts movies popular and attractive to international
audiences after quite a lull in general, but has also managed to reach older
people and those who have no general interest in martial arts, with the two Ip
Man movies which have come out in the past couple of years. For those who
don’t know, Ip Man is not a Chinese superhero (like He-Man, Super-Rat, Paper
Man or Bible Man, to name a few of the most famous), but the name of an actual
person who lived. He didn’t have an unfortunate name, since he wasn’t from an
English speaking country.
The visual quality of
these movies is truly spectacular. They present the events therein as historical fact, setting them in
a pre- and post-Sino-Japanese War period (1930s). Ip Man is a bourgeois, and an
expert of a martial art called Wing Chun, one which my sister did for a while,
and which some poser told me about a few years ago, claiming it was better than
karate. Funny how history repeats itself constantly (in the movie, posers are
constantly doing the same). Both movies follow the same pattern. The peaceful
life of the Chinese people in the first one (and the more difficult context of
the second, in which the hero is penniless in Hong Kong) is disrupted by evil
foreigners who abuse the Chinese. Therefore, the great master steps up to show Chinese
strength and pride. The story is simple, very well done, appealing, funny at
times, emotional at other times, and it presents a new way of doing martial
arts movies with an old formula, which is very exciting and fun to watch. They got some pretty
famous actors (for those who know Chinese cinema) to appear in them. Wonderful.
The problem with them, is that they’re not true. And while the Chinese were truly downtrodden
by both the Japanese and the West in the past, but let’s not forget the reality
of today, and their history of the last 50 years.
Now I’m a fan of
Donnie Yen's. I’ve been a fan of his since well-before his finally, well-deserved
recognition as a martial arts actor. He and Jet Li performed two of the
greatest fights in Chinese period martial arts dramas ever, in One Upon a
Time in China 2 and Hero. I was annoyed to see his career never take off in Hollywood, as I was
when his character got killed off so quickly in Blade 2 (even though he was the
fight choreographer, some things, you just don’t do!). So it’s kind of annoying
to have to bash these movies, when I’m so pleased that random people are saying
“Oh have you watched this?” as if it were mainstream, when they would never
normally have watched a movie of that kind before. It’s kinda like when one of
your favourite bands gets recognised for its most popular and more average
music.
Nonetheless, they frustrate
me on many levels; some of them people may not care about. The most important
and problematic one however, is the nationalistic spin on them. The Chinese
have done great movies over the years, but recently, it has become obvious that
the Chinese government wants to use cinema for propaganda. Some wonderful
movies have been made in the past decade which they could use to express their
metanarrative* (I’m thinking about the splendid trilogy of Zhang Yimou’s Hero,
House of Flying Daggers (less relevant here) and Curse of the Golden
Flower). However, recently, perhaps as a reaction to young and older people
getting more and more fidgety on internet forums, they’ve decided to bring out
the big guns and produce massive-budget movies which present the Chinese
revolution and the battles of the Communists in very vivid and epic ways. The
Beginning of the Great Revival and 1911, to name the two biggest
ones, have seen all the most famous and important Chinese and Hong Kong actors
alive today take a role in them. What a great way to entice audiences.
They want to do that,
fine. But don’t start putting your finger in every single movie out there! True
Legend, interesting and fun movie, ruined by its finale with its patriotic
spin. Ip Man presents its main character as a national hero who stood up
to the Japanese invaders, and Ip Man 2 makes him a double national hero
for standing up to proud Westerners and becoming the spokesman for equality and
respect… The problem is that nowhere do they mention that it only inspired from
his life and not completely accurate.
Wikipedia tells me
that Ip Man chose to leave Foshan for Hong Kong since the Communist Chinese
government didn’t appreciate his politics and his wealth, not because of the
Japanese.
The two movies use
formulae which have already been done to death in Fist of Fury, Fist
of Legend, Fearless, to name a few of the best. And it’s still
enjoyable, but the last bit of Ip Man 2 just stops making logical sense,
where he struggles to beat an English boxer after having taken out ten men at a
time in both movies.
Another thing that
frustrates and truly worries me is the presence, in both of these movies, of
interpreters, who in both cases are cowardly collaborators, but in the end
repent and turn to help the cause. This presents the person of the interpreter
automatically as a traitor, taking the saying “traduttore traditore”
absolutely literally! This just puts forth the idea that a true Chinese person
should not dabble in the affairs of foreigners and should simply be happy with
being part of the Chinese superstructure, not getting a linguistic education
unless it is for the purpose of serving his government. That was exactly the
stance of the USSR back in the cold war. Anyone who wants to translate and
bring into the country a foreign concept is automatically a traitor, for why do
we need any other ideas, if we’re right?
The formula has always
been there and it works. There are good guys and bad guys, it’s normal in a
Kung Fu movie. However, we can feel, sadly, that the simple and the moralistic
nature of these movies dumbs down Chinese cinema, and Hong Kong cinema (which are
two separate things, just in case you didn’t realise it). The nuanced, dark,
mysterious heroes of Zhang Yimou’s movies (sometimes too ambiguous for my
taste) or Johnnie To’s cinema (who can sometimes be too dark), give way to the
mono-expressive, bright, unfalteringly righteous man of the people. But I’m
criticising too much. I like black and white movies too. They ultimately give
you a sense of truth, right and wrong, the true metanarrative that we need a
saviour, an immovable man, a radical force to give us back what we’ve lost in
shame and weakness. The only problem is when this is done in a way that
presents untruths as true and black and white, right and wrong as depending on the
colour of your flag.
*A metanarrative is a
story beyond the story which explains a philosophical worldview.
