Thursday, December 10, 2015

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: The East Coming to The West

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon the most successful foreign language film in the U.S! It was the first foreign-language film to break the US $100 million mark in box office receipts. It is a huge surprise because Americans are known for being put off once a foreign language film is released. There is the stigma that it is going to be silly if it is dubbed. If it is subbed instead you will have to deal with the tiring job of reading the subtitles while trying to keep up with the movie. So as you can see the films in the foreign-language category already deal with a lot of obstacles before people even see their movies. While the movie being a success in the East wasn't a surprise; it being a success in the West was. It is unknown that the East does just as well in the West with their own movies. They often do well domestically in their own countries, but internationally that is another story. The U.S. is always looked at as the leader in film making and a film is only considered truly successful when it is successful in the U.S.
The director Ang Lee is a very extraordinary and versatile director. After Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Ang Lee directed The Hulk and Brokeback Mountain. What is interesting is how diverse he makes all his films from each other. You would rarely see one of his films and think "wow this is so much similar to the other" or "this is definitely Ang Lee's work". To be able to make something so mystical and action packed such as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and then to make something so romantic and Taboo such as Brokeback Mountain is truly something unique. Ang Lee was able to make the movie in such a way that it was relatable not to just an Asian audience but to an American audience as well. 
Over the years the fascination for Asian culture has been growing in America. You can see it in the growing interest in the kung-fu movies in the 1970's, and then later the global success in the Japanese video games and  cartoons in the 1990's (Chan, Wu 195). While the success will seem a bit of a surprise initially, when you really think about it Americans were getting more used to accepting the entertainment that the East was offering. All it took was a great movie like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon to ignite that interest. Their were already fans of the Asian culture and entertainment within the United States before this movie, but once this movie came out it shed even more light on Asian films. 
As you see here in the clip it is something extremely different from what American viewers would be used to. First off you see two females fighting in this scene. In most American films during this time it was very rare you will see females fighting and if they did it would be no where near as proficient as this. This particular film also had it's focus on the beauty and skill of martial arts particularly wuxia which is Chinese swordsmanship. While we have action in our films it is not as intricate and focused on the person such as this movie. If you see a movie like Rambo it is not really him fighting the enemy using his fists the whole time. It is him using a gun, a bazooka, a bomb, etc. In this film you see the characters use their bodies, a bamboo stick, and a sword. The focus is more on the characters' skill as a martial artist and what they can do instead of what they can use. With that said their is a focus in romance in this film as well. A stigma that many viewers may have on the Martial arts films is that it is always about action and it is pointless and confusing. In this film their is a clear focus on plot and romance and while the older "kung-fu" movies may have been that way it was definitely not the case for this film.

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: PG-13: 120 min: Action, Drama, Romance: 2001


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