Berlin Film Festival 2013

Derek Malcolm reviews the hot films premiering at this year's Berlina

The Grandmaster

****

You don’t expect a kung fu spectacular to open an international festival, but this is the work of Wong Kar Wei, the Hong Kong director who has made a very different animal from the usual chopsocky epic.

Five years in the making and trimmed by its fastidious director to 130 minutes from a four-hour rough cut, the film sets out to be a biography of Ip Man, the martial arts master who trained Bruce Lee.

But, in fact, after a first hour of all-out action during which the various schools of martial arts are on display, the film gradually turns into territory more familiar to the director’s fans — the melancholy and largely unrequited romance between the already married Ip (Tony Leung) and Er (Zhang Ziyi).

She is the daughter of another grandmaster, killed by a jealous protégé,  and at first fights Ip before a mutual attraction develops.

The pair drift apart during the long Sino-Japanese war and come together again only at the end of the film to ruminate on what might have been. Here Zhang is superb, with the director orchestrating an almost poetic and regretful finale.

The film is always very beautiful to look at, if sketchy as anything like an orthodox biography, but the fight scenes are shot with imagination and flair.

Ultimately The Grandmaster is as much about Chinese culture as it is about its myriad characters. That, and the director’s romanticism, gives the film its unique kick.

Source:dnaindia.com