Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

“Calling Ang Lee’s ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ a cult classic is still a grave understatement of how important this film really is. Besides Oscar nominations and a premiere at the prestigious ‘Cannes Film Festival’, it secured the Taiwanese filmmaker a firm spot among leading Hollywood directors. In 2000 he used US funding to make a nostalgic and revisionist take on wuxia pian epics and managed to sell it to the West. ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ is a film encyclopedia of a sort, in which Lee summarizes dozens of external influences. The plot is based on the literary tradition of Chinese knight stories and several scenes refer explicitly to the works of another Taiwanese great, King Hu. Lee and Hu also share what film critic Jaime Rebanal calls a contemplative action. Martial arts sequences are phenomenally choreographed by legendary Yuen Woo-ping and serve primarily as a form of communication. Characters conduct dialogues with their fists and kick lighter than air! They practically dance through space and prove that filmmakers can add completely new perspectives to conventional action scenes.” – Dan Krátký