Note: I saw the Hong Kong cut of The Grandmaster via Blu Ray Import

I almost want to ask that everyone go watch In The Mood for Love before seeing this movie. Not because they have that much to do with one another, other than sharing Wong Kar Wai as their director, but if only so that they viewer can get used to the style of Wong Kar Wai before getting into the conversation of him doing a kung fu epic that isn’t really that much of an action film at its heart.

The Grandmaster follows Ip Man (Tony Leung) throughout his entire lifetime. While we begin in Foshan where he and many martial artists became famous and honed their craft we end up going many other places with Ip Man over the years to help gauge the changes of the world around him throughout time.

The film opens with Ip Man giving a speech about the lack of importance in regards to styles of martial arts. Saying that the only thing that matters is “vertical or horizontal”, referring to one’s directions. With that in mind we’re treated to a lot of varying styles of martial arts in this film. With Ip Man being the most bland, but effective. Even when Ip Man explains his style he says that “it’s very simple“ and that there are only three main forms. So when we meet people show us variations that could count higher than decks have cards within the film it’s easy to see this as simplicity knocking against progressed innovation that tries too hard to rediscover what was already there to begin with.

When the film begins we are treated to a narrated opening of Ip Man explaining his life and how he was able to enjoy it for so long so simply, and at the same time it leads quickly into Wong Kar Wai’s first fight sequence in the rain Ip Man against a number of combatants in Foshan. As the film progresses, while it does have a short period of being a simple kung fu film of watching Ip Man being challenged and asked to be the representative of the Southern Kung Fu Styles and such, in reality we see that the film ends up spanning so much in way of time, geography and style of kung fu that it’s difficult to say where the narrative ends and the mood begins, because in the end the film becomes nothing more than a complete mood for how the prominence of the art has changed and the idea of how someone can just be a kung fu master and nothing else. Repeatedly in the film we hear it be said that “it’s better to advance than stop” and we never get to see Ip Man stop. We see him evolve over time.

Similarly we see Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi) stop. She, being the daughter of the Gong Family who’s head was murdered by their disciple, Ma San (Jin Zhang), is hell bent on revenge and refuses to advance past it. This forces the rest of her life to suffer, her ability to progress as a master, as a teacher, as a mother, as a friend all stop and remain stinted so as to serve her need for revenge. With the loss we witness Ip Man suffer we question whether the life of kung fu is a life at all.

With all this said there are still small elements that seem inconsequential and just distracting to the film as a whole. There’s a small subsection where we’re introduced to Razor (Chen Chang) and his barbershop gang — are they a gang? — but the film doesn’t quite integrate them into the Ip Man tale but rather it seems just to show how kung fu shifts from being a noble art to thuggery. Or at the very least that’s the best that I can understand as to why this character is even mentioned in the film.

The movie has a failed romantic feel that is reminiscent of In the Mood for Love and I wonder how many fans will want to pair it up with that film in order to get a lot more Tony Leung in their cinematic diet this coming week. At the same time it tries to be a great kung fu epic action film with action sequences that are deserving of that specification. The fight between Gong Er and Ip Man is so uniquely romantic that I feel it can serve as an example to all kung fu action films moving forward.

This is a film that asks a lot of questions of the life of Ip Man, but doesn’t really want to answer that many of them. I’m okay with that, but I acknowledge that many won’t be.

What do you think of The Grandmaster?