(If it can be
difficult to remember what won the Academy Award for Best Picture, it’s
downright mindbending trying to remember everything else it was up against. In An Honor To Be Nominated, I’ll be
taking a look back at some of the movies the Oscar didn’t go to and trying to
determine if they were robbed, if the Academy got it right, or if they should
ever have been nominated in the first place.)
The Contender: Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
Number of Nominations:
10 - Picture, Director (Ang Lee), Adapted Screenplay (Wang Hui-Ling and James
Schamus and Tsai Kuo Jung), Foreign Language Film, Original Score (Tan Dun), Original
Song (“A Love Before Time,” music by Jorge Calandrelli and Tan Dun, lyrics by
James Schamus), Art Direction (Tim Yip), Cinematography (Peter Pau), Costume
Design (Tim Yip), Film Editing (Tim Squyres)
Number of Wins: 4
(Foreign Language Film, Original Score, Art Direction and Cinematography)
The Academy
of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences is frequently (and justifiably) criticized for seeming to favor
certain movie genres over others. It is highly unusual to see a broad comedy, a
horror flick or a superhero epic compete in any category, much less Best
Picture. But there are really only three types of feature film that the Academy
treats as completely separate entities, relegated to their own categories:
animation, documentaries and foreign language films. These movies are expected
to stay within their own little niche groups, competing only against each
other, and for the most part, they do. Only three animated films have been
nominated for Best Picture so far (Beauty
And The Beast, Up and Toy Story 3) and no documentaries have
ever broken out of their race.
Foreign language films have had slightly better luck but not
much. As of 2016, less than 10 non-English-language movies have been up for
Best Picture, and that’s including Clint Eastwood’s US-produced,
Japanese-language Letters From Iwo Jima.
They’ve competed and occasionally won in other categories, including acting,
directing and writing, but Best Picture remains just out of reach for most
international productions. Of course, it
hardly comes as a surprise that an organization that has struggled with
diversity should remain stubbornly America-centric.
In theory, the Best Foreign Language Film category ought to
provide a thoughtful alternative to the Best Picture category, a true lineup of
the best in international cinema. But the rules in that category are both
convoluted and restrictive. For example, each country is required to submit
one, and only one, film for nominating consideration. This effectively turns
the category into the Olympics of moviemaking. These submissions reflect the
prevailing current attitude of each country, so there’s no way that someone
like acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, officially banned from
filmmaking by his country’s government, is ever going to have one of his movies
submitted for Oscar consideration.
Considering how narrow a field the Foreign Language Film
category has to select from, it’s a bit disappointing how many foreign-language
Best Picture nominees were already represented in that category. This includes
the strange case of Jan Troell’s The
Emigrants, nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 1972 and then
nominated for four additional awards, including Best Picture, the following
year thanks to some of those convoluted rules I mentioned. But by far the most
honored foreign-language film in Oscar history is Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,
nominated for 10 Oscars back in 2001, coming in just behind Best Picture winner
Gladiator as the most nominated film
of the year.
Ang Lee is undeniably one of the most respected filmmakers
working today but it’s easy to overlook the fact that he’s also one of cinema’s
most quietly eclectic and innovative directors. Unlike many international
directors, Lee achieved crossover success outside of his home country early on.
He received consecutive Best Foreign Language Film nominations for his second
and third films, The Wedding Banquet
and Eat Drink Man Woman. He
successfully transitioned to Hollywood
with Sense And Sensibility and The Ice Storm but suffered a
high-profile setback with the costly western Ride With The Devil (although that too has enjoyed a bit of a
re-evaluation since). Returning to Taiwan for his next feature may
have seemed like a lateral or even backwards step. But Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon proved to be an enormous stride
forward in both Lee’s career and for filmmaking in general.
While mainstream Western audiences had never seen anything
like Crouching Tiger before, Eastern
audiences (as well as hardcore Western movie buffs well-versed in the Hong Kong
movie scene) immediately recognized this as a traditional wuxia movie, albeit
one with a classier pedigree than usual. Wuxia tales are essentially Chinese
martial arts fiction and they’d been part of the Chinese and Hong
Kong film industries for about as long as those countries had been
making movies. They exploded in popularity in the 1960s and 70s thanks to such
producers as the Shaw Brothers and actor/directors like Jimmy Wang. But movies
like The One-Armed Swordsman, Master Of The Flying Guillotine and
even the acclaimed A Touch Of Zen
didn’t really reach Western shores until much later. And when they did, they
were often relegated to the drive-in and grindhouse circuit, all but
guaranteeing that no one would ever take them seriously.
A truly international coproduction, Crouching Tiger was the first real attempt at reaching both Eastern
and Western audiences simultaneously. And despite the fact that nothing in his
filmography to date suggested that a martial arts movie would be in his
wheelhouse, Ang Lee proved to be the ideal director to bridge that gap. Lee has
always been a meticulous filmmaker, paying careful attention to the details of
his film’s specific periods, be it contemporary Taiwan,
18th century England
or suburban America
in the 1970s. Crouching Tiger was
his first foray into a more fantastic realm but Lee takes his time and works up
to that aspect of the story, grounding it in sets and costumes that feel both
authentic and lived-in.
But Lee’s greatest gift as a filmmaker lies in his ability
to find the emotional truth that lies beneath scenes of grandly sweeping
romance. (He can also reverse that, turning very ordinary gestures into symbols
of aching romance, as in Brokeback
Mountain). This was evident in Sense
And Sensibility, where his humanistic worldview meshed beautifully with
Emma Thompson’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel to create a film both
sardonic and sweet. In Crouching Tiger,
he crafts two towering romances with such subtlety that you’re barely aware he’s
doing it. Indeed for about half the movie, aristocratic governor’s daughter Jen
(Zhang Ziyi) is presented as a rebellious spirit, rejecting her arranged
marriage and having secretly trained to be a warrior for years. We don’t learn
anything about her clandestine relationship with the desert bandit Dark Cloud (Chen
Chang) until we’ve fully started to know her as a strong, independent character
in her own right. When that aspect is finally introduced, it doesn’t weaken her
in the slightest. She rejects him as well, continuing to forge her own path,
right or wrong. Her literal leap of faith that concludes the film is no empty
romantic gesture. It’s transcendent because she fought long and hard to reach
the top of that mountain. That choice…that wish…is nobody’s to make other than
Jen’s alone.
But the truly timeless romance at the heart of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is the
unrequited love between master swordsman Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat) and Yu Shu
Lien (Michelle Yeoh). Both warriors have sacrificed their own personal
happiness in the name of duty and honor. They are clearly meant for each other,
two souls tied together by common history and extraordinary ability, but doomed
to remain separate. Given that both move with a grace and agility that defies
the laws of physics, it makes perfect sense that their love also exists on a
higher plane. Chow is given one of the most yearningly romantic lines in movie
history to drive the point home: “I would rather be a
ghost drifting by your side as a condemned soul than enter heaven without you.”
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was also the first real indicator of
Ang Lee’s tremendous technical skill. In recent years, he has proven himself to
be every bit as fascinated by and adept with the most cutting-edge filmmaking technologies
as James Cameron, Robert Zemeckis and George Lucas. But in Lee’s hands, these
tools are used much differently, creating indelible images of visual poetry. Even
a movie like Hulk, which even the
most ardent Ang Lee supporter has to admit is kind of a misfire, looks and
feels like no other superhero movie before or since.
Lee’s key collaborator on Crouching Tiger is undeniably the
legendary action choreographer Yuen Woo-ping. Yuen made his name in the 70s and
80s working with such icons as Jackie Chan and Jet Li. He had just broken
through internationally a year previous, helping to transform the look of
movies forever alongside the Wachowskis with The Matrix. Largely thanks to the success of that film, wire fu was
not an entirely alien concept to Western audiences when Crouching Tiger debuted. But hardly anyone had used the technique
with such style and fluidity prior to this. Lee and Yuen start slowly but
steadily build on their use of the effect. The actors genuinely seem to be
defying gravity and yet still seem to be accomplishing this feat through their
own physical effort. By the time Chow and Zhang take to those vertiginously
swaying bamboo trees, it’s clear that this has moved far beyond a simple visual
effect and entered the realm of magical realism.
In the wake of Crouching Tiger’s success, a wave of sumptuously filmed,
serious-minded wuxia films hit cinemas. Zhang Yimou delved into such wildly
colorful efforts as Hero, House Of Flying Daggers and Curse Of The Golden Flower. Chen Kaige produced
the middling The Promise and, more
recently, Monk Comes Down The Mountain.
Wong Kar-wai, who had experimented with the genre early in his career with Ashes Of Time, took a stab at a more
contemporary martial arts film with The
Grandmaster. Even the Kung Fu Panda
franchise owes its existence to the success of Ang Lee’s film.
Surprisingly, it took over a decade
for an official sequel to arrive, despite the fact that the movie’s source
material is just one in a series of five books. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword Of Destiny debuted theatrically
in Hong Kong and China
and on Netflix in the rest of the world this past February. (It also received a
cursory release on a tiny handful of American IMAX screens.) With choreographer
Yuen Woo-ping taking over as director and only Michelle Yeoh returning from the
original cast, Sword Of Destiny is
an odd, unsatisfying but not entirely worthless follow-up.
Where Lee struck a perfect balance
between Eastern and Western sensibilities, Yuen immediately tips things in
favor of the West. The movie was shot in English, not Mandarin, and digital
effects are much more of a factor this time out. Sword Of Destiny essentially retells the original movie’s Quest for
the Sword plot with less focus, tossing in a quartet of comic relief
warriors-for-hire and a pair of would-be romantic relationships that are pale
shades of those in the first film. But many of the action sequences are
impressive, especially those involving the always-incredible Donnie Yen. If
this was just a direct-to-video martial arts flick, you’d probably think it was
pretty good. But as a follow-up to a bona fide modern classic, it can’t
compete.
When the Oscars were finally handed out on March 25, 2001, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had
virtually no chance of winning Best Picture. It had already overcome nearly
insurmountable odds just by landing a nomination. And for Ang Lee and everyone
involved with the film, the awards were no doubt appreciated but they were kind
of beside the point. The real prize was how well audiences around the world
responded to the film. Even today, it remains the highest grossing foreign
language film ever released in the United States, proving that there
are indeed some things that transcend borders and language.
Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Sony Pictures Classics.
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