Author Topic: Crouching Sensibility Hidden Meaning  (Read 12538 times)

Offline starboardlight

  • BetterMost 1000+ Posts Club
  • ******
  • Posts: 1,127
    • nipith.com
Re: Crouching Sensibility Hidden Meaning
« Reply #30 on: July 29, 2006, 08:50:04 am »
I have read all your comments with great interest and I now can say I still hated it.  'my bad?  Sorry my cultured crew, but expressionless actors swinging from pullies over a blue screen just doesn't do it for me, even if there is a gorgeous carving knife and a lovely ivory hair rake involved!  I still rate it equal with watching an electric drill entering my eye.

Fair enough. and I don't mean to suggest anyone is uncultured if they don't get this movie. It's just that growing up in an Asian household, I'm used to seeing emotions expressed differently. My dad is one of the most stoic man I know. His face hardly gives away any emotion, unless he's really happy or angry. I've learn to see the subtle signs. That's the society Asians live in. Keeping face is a strong underlying idea. It never occurred to me that the actors were "expressionless" because that's the world the characters lived in.
"To do is to be." Socrates. - "To be is to do." Plato. - "Do be do be do" Sinatra.

Offline JennyC

  • BetterMost Supporter!
  • Brokeback Got Me Good
  • *****
  • Posts: 812
Re: Crouching Sensibility Hidden Meaning
« Reply #31 on: July 29, 2006, 01:31:55 pm »
I have read all your comments with great interest and I now can say I still hated it.  'my bad?  Sorry my cultured crew, but expressionless actors swinging from pullies over a blue screen just doesn't do it for me, even if there is a gorgeous carving knife and a lovely ivory hair rake involved!  I still rate it equal with watching an electric drill entering my eye.

Ray,

Yon don't get the whole movie or just the part that you posted the pic?  Frankly if there is any part of the movie that I don't quite like or get, is the part with Jiao Long's suicide.  I guess I know why she wanted to do that, but the way it was performed just doesn't do it for me.  Apart from that, I don't think the actors are expressionless most of the times. 

Welcome back, glad to see you around regardless ;D.

Offline Front-Ranger

  • BetterMost Moderator
  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 30,288
  • Brokeback got us good.
Re: Crouching Sensibility Hidden Meaning
« Reply #32 on: July 29, 2006, 05:04:17 pm »
Interesting that U brought up the knife and the hair comb, because they are the two shirts of this movie. I second the thought of Jenny, Ray. Great to have U back!! Now I can shush the voice of Renee Zellweger calling "Ray? Ray?" in my head (from Jerry Maguire). BTW, I saw Ride With the Devil last nite, another Ang Lee film. I wonder what U would think of that one. I liked it a lot.
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline Front-Ranger

  • BetterMost Moderator
  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 30,288
  • Brokeback got us good.
Re: Crouching Sensibility Hidden Meaning
« Reply #33 on: July 31, 2006, 05:42:47 pm »
Here's something more from the Web on the Wuxia/Western connection, mentioning Star Wars as you did earlier, Nipith:

Quote
Wuxia film style has also been appropriated by the West. In 1986, John Carpenter's film Big Trouble in Little China was inspired by the visuals of the genre. The Matrix trilogy has many elements of wuxia, although the heroes and the villains of The Matrix gain their supernatural powers from a different source. Similarly, when Star Wars was released in the late 1970s, many Chinese audiences viewed it as a western wuxia movie set in a futuristic and foreign world (especially the duel between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi with lightsabers). The Star Wars prequels showed even more of a western wuxia style.
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline Front-Ranger

  • BetterMost Moderator
  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 30,288
  • Brokeback got us good.
Re: Crouching Sensibility Hidden Meaning
« Reply #34 on: March 24, 2007, 12:48:22 pm »
I hope I don't go on and on about this, but recently I mentioned that I thought Brokeback Mountain carried on the Wuxia tradition in Chinese arts in a new milieu, and I was just about drummed off the board. People were debating about it for days!! So, here is some information, and I would like to know what Nipith, Jenny, and all of you think about this. Wuxia=martial arts junk? or enduring archetype??

There is a long literary tradition in China called "Wuxia" that has to do with martial arts, chivalry, and historical epic storytelling. Wuxia novels and stories extend back to the early dynasties, and when the People's Revolution drove many Wuxia writers into exile the tradition was carried on in other places such as Taiwan, where Ang Lee was born. Wuxia stories have parallels to other cultures including the West. This is from Wikipedia:

“The world these heroes created for themselves has since taken on a life of its own, has become a sort of "shared world" alternate universe in which, the mundane laws of physics are suspended, and men and women of spotless virtue roam the landscape searching for fresh challenges.[11] It is a world that is so well known to all Asian creators and consumers of wuxia stories that it even has a name: jiang hu.” From Heroic Grace: The Chinese Martial Arts Film by David Chute Editor's Introduction to the catalog of the landmark touring film series curated by Cheng-Sim Lim for the UCLA Film and Television Archive, 2003.


From the book "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Portrait of the Ang Lee Film" the author, David Bordwell, compares the wuxia films to Westerns:

“The wuxia pian, or film of martial chivalry, is rooted in a mythical China, but it has always reinvented itself for each age. Like the American Western, the genre has been reworked to keep in touch with audiences’ changing tastes and to take advantage of new filmmaking technology. Yet at the center it retains common themes and visceral appeals.”
"chewing gum and duct tape"