Ang Lee's Martial Law

Taken from Issue 73 (Jan 2001) of Dazed: 

Director Ang Lee says, “Kung fu is pure cinema energy – it's raw, it's cool, it's fun.” And it seems like the whole of Hollywood agrees. The Matrix (1999) endowed both its heroes and its sinister Agents with kung fu techniques lifted wholesale from Eastern martial arts movies. The resurrected Charlie's Angels (2000) have replaced the pathetic kicking of their forebears with whirlwind martial arts attacks that wouldn't shame Jackie Chan. And most surprisingly of all, Ang Lee, the Oscar-winning director of Sense And Sensibility (1995) and The Ice Storm (1997), has made a Hong Kong-style martial arts movie entitled Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). So why would a director who has made his name from his deft handling of emotionally charged but resolutely karate-free dramas turn his hand to producing a martial arts film, the Eastern equivalent of the B-movie? “Martial arts has always been one of the main kinds of entertainment in Chinese society. There's a part of me that feels that unless you make a martial arts film, you are not a real filmmaker. It's a fascinating world, where people can fly, where anything can happen.” says Lee. And boy, can people fly in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The laws of physics are put on hold as Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh and the gang all seize magical weapons and race straight up walls, leap from treetops, dive into rivers then, unbelievably, bounce back out 20 feet into the air. It's like watching ballet in zero-G, with everyone carrying a razor-sharp sword. 

The man behind the slice-and-dice aerobatics is Yuen Wo Ping, who also choreographed the luscious scenes of violence in The Matrix (1999). “Working with martial arts master Yuen Wo Ping and his team allowed me to learn an almost pure form of filmmaking, where the images and editing are like dance and music. The fighting is never just kicking and punching, it is also a way for the characters to express their unique situations and feelings,” explains Lee. So is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon the culmination of decades of gradual advancement in kung fu cinema, a learning process through which punching and kicking have become as emotive as talking and kissing? Or is it a case of a “serious” filmmaker making a serious film out of a genre that's always verged on the childish and two-dimensional, like making an Unforgiven (1992) for chopsocky? Well, that depends on how you look at the whole kung fu phenomenon. There have been more martial arts movies made than movies of any other single genre. Literally hundreds a year were flowing out of Hong Kong in the 70s, 80s and early 90s. 

Kung fu, meaning “time and energy”, is the ultra-violent backbone to a whole other cinematic world. It's a world that's spawned a slew of scarily intense fan websites, many with “martial arts” comically misspelt as “marital arts”. But outside of Hong Kong, we only ever see the tiniest fraction of the thousands of films pumped out by this massive film industry. The thing that tends to distort matters is that kung fu has it's own Elvis in the form of Bruce Lee. Fans of the screechy man with the one inch punch will tell you that kung fu never recovered from his sudden and mysterious death in 1975.

“It’s really simple. A boy goes to a place where he can't speak the language and expresses himself by beating the hell out of everyone” – Bruce Lee on Enter the Dragon

Bruce was so revered by martial arts fans that many of his Malaysian devotees earnestly believed that his untimely death was a publicity stunt for his unfinished film Game Of Death (1978), although their confidence in his return is presumably waning after Bruce's three-decade-long no-show. Bruce attained his iconic status as the man who broke kung fu to the Western world. At the time of his rise to global fame, the martial arts cinema of Hong Kong was in overdrive, and studios like The Shaw Brothers were putting out literally hundreds of films a year. But the films hardly ever made it out of East Asia. They contracted all their actors, sometimes on pay packets of as little as $40 per week. When Bruce Lee toured the East in 1970, one of the Shaw Brothers offered him a contract for the princely sum of $70 per week. Just three years later, after attaining fame in the West with Enter the Dragon (1973), he was able to command fees in excess of $400,000 from the same Shaw brother. Sadly, that was just before Bruce died, leaving greedy studio bosses to finish off Game Of Death (1978) with offcuts clumsily lifted from his earlier films, so the scenery behind Bruce suddenly changes mid-fight. One of the reasons for the absurdly low rates of pay in the early 70s was that actors in kung fu films didn't speak their lines. They just moved their mouths whenever speaking was expected, then dubbing studios would add dialogue in the languages of whatever countries the films were being exported to. So, no Oscars for acting talent then. But by anyone's reckoning, this was the dawn of the golden age of kung fu. Even if you view Bruce with suspicion, as a money-grabber who sold Hollywood a product that the Shaw Brothers were doing better on home turf, the 70s were still a period of unprecedented productivity. It was a time when the studios were producing films dripping with energy, films that would later serve as the blueprints for many of today's action films.

In 1978, the young Yuen Wo Ping, unaided by Crouching Tiger's vaulting wires, put out a film starring a relative unknown, Jackie Chan. Entitled Drunken Master (1978), the film was a showcase for "drunken-style" kung fu - a swaying, defensive style - and was based around the unlikely premise that Jackie and his white-bearded uncle couldn't fight unless they were pissed out of their minds. Major league success with films like Snake In The Eagle's Shadow (1978) and The Young Master (1980) were to follow. Jackie had started off doing lame Bruce Lee knock-offs, including an incomprehensible sequel to Fists Of Fury, so when he hit it big he made a conscious effort to be different. Where Bruce punched high, Jackie punched low. Where Bruce stuck to ferocious combat to thrill his audiences, Jackie leapt off buildings and ran in front of speeding trucks. And where Bruce remained ferocious and impassive throughout, Jackie specialised in humorous facial gymnastics. The same period marked the arrival of Jet Li, who recently shot to global fame in the hip hop-inflected kung fu romp Romeo Must Die (2000). Jet, from mainland China, was five times Chinese national martial arts champion, before starring in the first modern kung fu film to come out of mainland China, Shao Lin Temple (1982). While Jackie specialised in modern settings, stunts and self-mutilation, Jet stuck rigorously to developing his skills in Wu Shu-style kung fu. Gene Ching, publisher of Kung Fu magazine and kungfumagazine.com says, “It was the real age of kung fu, the 70s in the wake of Bruce Lee, going into the 80s. They were cranking out so many classics, tales of attaining justice against insurmountable odds through hard work and dedication of spirit. Enter The Dragon (1973) was the most pivotal, but the following years contained so many different epics.” So where do the plots of kung fu films come from, the endless wicked feudal lords and wronged princes, the limitless supply of grim-faced monks and doe-eyed ladies? Well, the Cantonese have an expression for it. They call it “warming over yesterday's cold rice”. First, the stories tended to come out of 1930s dramas, then from traditional “Wuxia” – or “lone knight” – stories.

“The 70s in the wake of Bruce Lee was the real age of Kung Fu. They were cranking out so many classic tales of attaining justice against insurmountable odds” – Gene Ching, Editor Kung Fu magazine

But traditional sources didn't need to mean a sedate, old-world pace for the movies pouring out of Hong Kong. They were divided into two categories: “fist” and “pillow” - violent and erotic. Between three and five per cent of the budgets of early Bruce Lee films like Fists Of Fury (1971) went on artificial blood. The division between “fist” and “pillow” still persists in Hong Kong cinema in the divide between the straight-up martial arts flicks and the more “adult” thrills offered by “Category 3” films like Naked Killer (1992) and Sex And Zen (1991). It is from the traditional kung fu cinema of the late 70s that the Wu Tang clan drew inspiration, along with many of their samples. Shaw Brothers films were a favourite source, especially on their ground-breaking first album Enter The Wu Tang. It's at its best when juxtaposing intense martial arts technology with urban slang... and really loud swear words: And the survey says – “you're dead/Fatal Flying Guillotine chops off your fucking head” says Rza on “Ain't Nuthin Ta F' Wit”. Every film that the Wu Tang have pilfered stuff from is from the lunatic fringe of kung fu cinema. The kind of films where warriors trade incredibly in-depth critiques of each other's fighting styles –  “I see you're using your old style.” “No, it's different, I only learned it last week.” – before joining over-amplified battle once more. It was an ideal metaphor for hardcore rap: Shaw Brothers films were possibly the only other recorded media on earth where characters got as mouthy and analytical about violence as your average rapper does on a daily basis. Enter The Wu Tang sold millions.

“The ninja thing isn't to do with violence, it's more to do with their stealth, really. The ninjas would be sent into a castle to soften up the forces before the samurai went in. Again, there's the thing of kung fu being silent then strongly percussive. It fits easily into music” – Jonathon More, co-owner of Ninjatune

It also inspired a whole generation of rappers to flirt with kung fu samples and imagery, some very successfully, some less so. Next time you're in a record shop it's well worth checking out the inner sleeve of Mobb Deep's Hell On Earth, where the usual assortment of coke-dealing bad boys sit round a marble table, inexplicably flanked by a pair of black-clad ninjas. Jonathon More, one half of Coldcut and co-owner of Ninjatune, reckons the connection between hip hop and kung fu is a natural one. “The ninja thing isn't to do with violence, it's more to do with their stealth, really. The ninjas would be sent into a castle to soften up the forces before the samurai went in. Again, there's the thing of kung fu being silent then strongly percussive. It fits easily into music.” But it wasn't just the breaky and beaty end of music that was being infiltrated by the Shao Lin skills of Hong Kong stars. Games like Street Fighter 2 stole moves from Jackie Chan's movies. The ever-adaptable Jackie stole them back in Police Story 3 (1992) in a scene Crippled Avengers (1978). Directed by Cheh Chang where he mimics moves on an arcade machine while fighting opponents ina packed video arcade. Tekken, released in 1995, had barely-disguised versions of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, complete with trademark moves and costumes. And suddenly, Western stars seemed to be developing the same kind of acrobatic kung fu skills that had been selling cinema tickets in Hong Kong for decades. Whereas Arnie and Bruce settled for an honest right hook, the new generation of action stars like Steven Seagal managed to learn to pirouette about the place like ballet dancers in spite of their size. Combat went into slow motion. Punches became louder. Suddenly, with the release of the English-language Rumble In The Bronx (1995), Jackie Chan was big box office in America. He became a star so resilient in the public consciousness that he could even withstand appearing in an ad for Pepsi, a move that had proved disastrous for The Spice Girls and MC Hammer. Even Robin Hood in his ultra-camp "New Adventures", became an expert in kung fu. Suddenly, no action hero could be without a bit of kung fu know-how. Close-up combat had become art and stylised violence was the norm.

In much the same way that no action hero could ever use one pistol after John Woo brought his Hong Kong-inflected two-gun action to Hollywood, no hand-to-hand fight could ever be reduced to simple back-and-forth punches after the speeded-up and slowed-down balletic violence in The Matrix. But Hong Kong's arrival in the mainstream has been received with a distinct lack of rapture by the obsessives who were haunting specialist video shops throughout the 70s, 80s and early 90s. Brian White from Hong Kong Legends, a company which imports and restores classic kung fu films, has said, “The golden age of kung fu films ended in about 1995. Hong Kong's been left pretty much alone since reunification and they make movies much as before, but they've got bigger budgets, they're trying to emulate Western films. In so doing they're losing that unpredictable quality.” Films like A Man Called Hero (1999) boast budgets in the region of $25 million, which would have made several hundred Shaw Brothers films back in Hong Kong's heyday, maybe even several thousand. Martial arts coordinators like Yuen Wo Ping are suddenly worth enormous amounts of money, and the once-isolated cinema of Hong Kong is starting to look like part of a slightly watered-down global industry. And then someone goes and makes a kung fu film where the dialogue means something. A kung fu film where the female characters are more than bits of scenery who hang around looking pleasant as people fight in the foreground. Because that's where Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is different. Not in the aerobatic nature of the fights: that's been done before in films like The Legend Of Fong Sai Yuk (1993), where characters waltzed on air, on water, on tiny shreds of cloth. There's even a word for it, “wire-fu”. The difference is in the level of characterisation, the fact that there's something more to the characters than the obsession with loyalty and honour that froze Bruce Lee's face into a snarl for the duration of most of his films. Is this the next stage? If it is, it's probably too late for veteran face-puller Jackie Chan. But he's already cracked Hollywood, and everyone knows you don't need acting skills to make it big in Tinseltown. The back catalogue of kung fu cinema is staggeringly vast. It's the goldmine that's arming Hollywood with a whole new set of action cliches, and musicians with a set of badly-dubbed samples about people punching each other. And there's more raw energy, inventive camera work and sheer style in one of the "golden age" Shaw Brothers flicks than you get in ten formulaic Hollywood thrillers. “It 's really a simple plot,” said Bruce Lee of Way Of The Dragon, “a country boy going to a place where he cannot speak the language, but he comes out on top because he honestly and simply expresses himself by beating the hell out of everyone.” Indeed.