While I enjoyed Gladiator (which won Best Picture against CTHD), I was and still am not sure it really deserved it.
However, There’s no way on God’s Green Earth CTHD deserved anything. It was a marginally well-done Chinese epic drama, a genre which is generaly so obnoxious as to be laughable. I can think of two good ones, and CTHD is only good. It is not great.
The film focuses only erratically on its characters, and usually the less interesting ones. The ending is… weak, at best. Frankly, I thought it was an excercise in sheer idiocy. It may have appealed to the Chinese. (If so, I can only take this as evidence China has bad taste.)
Specifically, the girl tosses herself off a cliff after being given her freedom and being told where her lover is. Ah… OK. To this day, I hear people argue over whether she was kiling herself just because, or turned into a bird (not that it showed anything of the kind), or if she was just running away again with her badass martial arts. There are two kinds of ambiguous endings: the first is where the “end” of the story is not told, because it’s a story which hs not truly ended. The second is where the story is just unclear, and people are trying to cover for their bad writing with cliched “artsy” ad-ins. Had a western film done this, it would have been laughed at and ignored. But toss in some kung-fu, and everyone goes gaga.
Frankly, It’s a good movie, but only a good movie. And everything in it has been done better elsewhere. A real oscar-worthy Chinese film is The Emperor and the Assassin.
I liked it, but agree it’s not really deserving of the praise heaped on it. I think it was so well received simply because it was the first Chinese wuxia film that a lot of Americans had seen. People like things that are different and new, and even if CTHD wasn’t either, it was to Academy members.
Out of curiosity, what is the other Chinese epic you thought was great?
I can’t even remember the name of it. It was an odd-duck film about an (English? American?) and a Chinese wannabe photographer. The western-dude had brought early movie-making equipment, and was trying to interest the locals in it. Over the course of the film, they piss off some people, make some friends out of others, and although things don’t turn out exactly idea, they do come out fairly happy at the end. It incorporated the real oldest footage known of Chinese people caught on film.
De gustibus, as they say. IMO, it certainly deserved the Oscar, for Yeoh and Fat’s understated acting. That scene in the teahouse, for instance. Plus all the spectacle. But then I’m a sucker for spectacle - I really rate Hero, for instance.
I actually I think it deserved an Oscar much more then that piece of dreck Gladiator.
The acting in CTHD was superb as was Ang Lee’s direction.
I have seen several other Wuxia movies which didn’t impress me in the least.
Hero and House of the Flying Daggers for example looked fine, but just didn’t have the heart and soul of CTHD.
I think Ang Lee is an amazing director who always seems to get the best out of the actors involved.
My understanding is CTHD was much more popular in the West than in China. But I’m not sure.
I believe CTHD is also just part one of a multi-part series of books (I think my mom mentioned reading them). She could probably answer the questions in your spoiler. Would you like me to ask her?
I watched it twice. It did not get better. Flying through the trees and doing martial arts just left me cold. If you see it as a device do it and then quit, but minute after minute of flying people was too much for me.
I’ve seen it several times, and it didn’t achieve it’s full impact until the third viewing.
The first time, I was following the story reading the subtitles.
The second time, I knew the story, and was watching the actor speaking.
The third time, I was watching the other actor in the scene.
And that was where the real emotional payload delivered. Ang Lee directs the other actors in a scene as carefully as the one the audience is supposed to be paying attention to. Michele Yeoh’s face while Chow Yun-Fat’s was speaking was telling a heartbreaking story about why these two people who loved each other could never be together. Most of the time characters in movies are, like most people in life, just waiting for their turn to speak. Lee’s characters listen.
While not the best film from a pure HK martial arts fan appeal, it wasn’t a film aiming at the Jackie Chan / Jet Li market.
CTHD had the A-list of A-list actors, the finest fight choreography team in history, classic novel source material, a budget to support the superb cinematography, sets, and costumes, and a critically acclaimed director with a love affair of the genre. It was the perfect storm of crossover success potential.
Gladiator, on the other hand, had no real standout acting, and terribly flawed MTV-cut action cinematography, which didn’t make it deserving of a best picture. A contender for sets, costumes, and screenplay sure, but not best picture.
This is not a thread about Gladiator, although I would argue it holds up much better than CTHD. I only wish that move had really explored Rome itself more thoroughly.
I loved the movie when it came out, like it now, but it was still better than Gladiator. I didnt see any of the other BP nominees so I cant say if any of them deserved it
That’s not why she did what she did. She had ruined lives, and she had turned from a silly party kung fu badass chick, into a sensitive woman, with adult sensibilities.
Chinese period martial epics (like Western period fantasy epics) tend to be pretty silly, and CTHD was actually one of the best ones, considering all of the dreck you find playing on Chinese TV.
If you want to find good character-driven Chinese movies, I’d suggest veering away from martial arts films and towards stuff like:
To Live - an epic set in the Cultural Revolution In The Mood For Love - about two neighbors who suspect their spouses of infidelity Luo Ye Gui Gen - an epic quest through rural China to get a dead friend home A World Without Thieves - a semi martial-arts movie involving rival conmen/thieves and their mark, on a train Raise the Red Lantern - set in 1920’s China, focusing on the fourth concubine of the house
For some reason, most mainland films that I like tend to be quite depressing…
