Crouching tiger hidden dragon landscape movie#
Crouching tiger hidden dragon landscape series#

And it also confirmed that the Taiwanese-born Lee, coming off several acclaimed English-language dramas including “Sense and Sensibility” (1995) and “The Ice Storm” (1997), had pulled off another of the chameleon-like swerves that would come to define his career. It was the first sign that “Crouching Tiger,” a seamless weave of art-house formalism and chopsocky kinetics, was going to be a much bigger deal stateside than any Mandarin-language wuxia picture had any reason to expect.

As observers would tell it again and again, the sight of these two warriors soaring magically over the rooftops, then engaging in a stunning display of hand-to-hand, wall-to-wall combat, was so captivating that it led audiences at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival to erupt in spontaneous applause.

Crouching tiger hidden dragon landscape movie#

Shu Lien and Jen’s first action sequence, brilliantly staged by the great Hong Kong choreographer Yuen Wo-ping and set to the propulsive drumbeats of Tan Dun’s lyrical score, immediately cemented “Crouching Tiger’s” place in movie legend. (The intricately plotted screenplay, adapted from a 1941-42 serialized novel by Chinese author Wang Du Lu, was written by Wang Hui-ling, James Schamus and Tsai Kuo-jung.) For the rest of the story, amid soaring desert interludes and bamboo-forest intrigues, Shu Lien and Mu Bai will take turns trying to rein in Jen Yu (Zhang Ziyi), an endearing and exasperating rebel spirit intent on seizing the love and liberation that our two older heroes have long denied themselves. We are thrust into a martial-arts movie for the ages, yes, but also a sly tragicomedy of cross-generational angst.

The sword falls into impetuous young hands, heralding the first of “Crouching Tiger’s” many exhilaratingly fluid transformations. For this is a movie about, among other things, the mysterious inflections and operations of time: It’s about how a furiously kinetic fight scene can make the world stand still, and how years of silent suffering can pass by in an instant.īut defy it he does. The lack of hurry is crucial, not only to the story’s distinctive flow and rhythm but also to its meaning. His answer - he has a grave to visit and a score to settle - feels like both an honest one and a deflection. In every soft-edged gaze and wistful smile that passes between Mu Bai and Shu Lien, we can read years of unfulfilled, unarticulated longing. They have some important business concerning a trip to Beijing, a deadly sword and Mu Bai’s impending retirement, but their cautious body language tells a more personal story.Īnd Lee, to his credit, gives them the time and space to tell it. He eases us into a lost world - a Chinese village, sometime during the Qing dynasty - where two highly skilled fighters and longtime allies, Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-fat) and Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh), are about to have a long-overdue reunion.

Crouching tiger hidden dragon landscape series#

Right from the start, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” is built on a series of tensions that the director Ang Lee is in no hurry to resolve. It begins with a plaintive cello solo, followed by a crashing of drums: Serene melancholy yields to pulse-quickening excitement.