Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Despite the wealth of talent involved on both sides of the camera, there’s little escaping the fact that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is essentially the Titanic of modern wuxia cinema. An international co-production steeped in melodrama, it’s not that it’s inauthentic exactly, more that its machine-tooled for mainstream crossover appeal. Crossover it certainly did, winning four of it’s 10 Oscar nominations, even if it famously failed to set the box office alight with Chinese audiences.
There’s an undeniable elegance to Ang Lee’s direction even through the film’s amorous longueurs, and while the eyelid-threatening, pan-pipe moods of Dun Tan’s score often invite the occasional blackout, Yuen Woo-ping’s fight choreography is suitably timed to pull one back from the brink. Notable for its explicitly feminist take on the genre, there’s plenty here to enjoy, if little to trouble the crowns of the best of its antecedents.