#414: The Double Life of Veronique (1991)

Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski

Cast: Irène Jacob

(Sorry about the bad quality on the trailer, it's the only version I could find that doesn't suck.)

Have you ever felt like you somehow aren't quite complete? And I don't mean that in the sense of the search for a soulmate. I mean, you felt like you yourself are somehow in two different places at once. Well, Véronique of Paris has felt that way her whole life, and Weronika of Krakow would be able to tell her why. Weronika was walking along Market Square in Krakow when she sees herself boarding a bus full of tourists.

I wish I could give more to the synopsis. This movie is brilliant, but there's really no way to put it into words. Even though I could say that not much happens in the plot, I can't deny that my eyes were glued to the TV. The feeling evoked from the film is absolutely haunting - and that's a word I use sparsely ( -- it's also one of my favorite words!).

Through Irène Jacob's performance, the audience is put into a constant state of unease. We are immediately in league with Véronique and can sense every nuance of her emotional state, and everyone else is a mystery. There are even characters that we see multiple times, watching Véronique, and we never learn who it is that's watching her.

I would normally be ashamed of myself to leave the post here, but reading other reviews, I know that this is one of the hardest films to write about. I could sit here for weeks trying to come up with something without success. All I can say is, this is a beautiful movie that instills feelings in me that no other film has. Will certainly be looking up more of Kieslowski's works.

Fun Trivia (Stolen from IMDB):

• Kieslowski originally wanted Andie MacDowell to play Veronique.
• The text sung by Weronika in the Concert is actually the beginning of the second Chant of Dante's Paradiso: "O voi che siete in piccioletta barca, desiderosi d'ascoltar, seguiti dietro al mio legno che cantando varca, Non vi mettete in pelago, ché forse, perdendo me, rimarreste smarriti. L'acqua ch'io prendo giá mai non si corse; Minerva spira è conducemi Appollo, è nove Muse mi dimostran l'Orse." Dante, Paradiso, II, 1-9.

#422: A Man Escaped (1956)

(Original Title: Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut)

Director: Robert Bresson

Cast: François Leterrier, Charles Le Clainche, Maurice Beerblock & Jacques Ertaud

In April of 1943, French resistance member André Devigny was arrested by the German authorities and brought to prison in Lyon. In his cell, nothing but escape was on his mind. Using the bare furnishings inside his cell, he conceived a plan - but has to carry it out before August 28, the day set for his execution.

The film is designed for the viewer to be forced to endure just a glimpse of the patience and determination required to even stay sane while detained in such horrible conditions. We grow an understanding of how much we overlook the opportunity to treasure the smallest of things, taking full advantage of their uses. Much of the success of this film is thanks to the advice from the man himself, André Devigny, who gave many details of his travails to director Robert Bresson. The film gets even more credibility by having a majority of the piece filmed inside the actual prison, Fort Montluc.

The minimal use of music, script or even visual detail gives a sense of dread to this film, leading us to have just the slightest of ideas of the horrendous state of affairs in Occupied France.

You should most certainly watch this film, considered one of the classics of French cinema. Even Paul Dano agrees with me.

Fun Trivia (Stolen from IMDB):

• Bresson insisted on complete authenticity. Original author Andre Devigny served as adviser on the film, which was actually shot in the same Montluc prison where he was incarcerated. Devigny also loaned Bresson the ropes and hooks he had used in his escape.
• After seeing the film, Jean-Luc Godard said that Bresson was "to French cinema what Mozart is to German music and Dostoevsky is to Russian literature".
• Robert Bresson himself had been a prisoner of war during WWII.
• The first film of Bresson's where he used a completely non-professional cast.

#427: Spring in a Small Town (1948)

(Original Title: Xiao Cheng Zhi Chun)

Director: Mu Fei

Cast: Wei Wei, Yu Shi, Wei Li, Hongmei Zhang & Chaoming Cui

Surprise! No trailer found, but you can watch the full film for free! Sorry, embedding doesn't seem to work. But! Free movie!

Soon after WWII, Yuwen finds herself living unhappily with her ill husband Liyan. Also living at their formerly exquisite house are Liyan's sister known simply as Meimei (Mandarin for 'little sister') and their servant, Lao Huang. Yuwen gets a shock one day when her old sweetheart named Zhichen arrives to visit Liyan, Zhichen's old schoolmate, a fact that Yuwen never knew. She soon realizes that she is still in love with Zhichen, while Liyan hopes for Yuwen to play matchmaker for Zhichen and Meimei.

This film was originally released just a year before the Communist Revolution. Before the film could make a name for itself, the Communists banned the film for being counter-revolutionary, and it was doomed to be lost forever. Luckily, the '80s brought a renaissance of Chinese cinema, leading to the film's rediscovery. Since then, Spring in a Small Town has been hailed as the greatest Chinese film of all time.

I'm not gonna lie, I don't see the big deal about this film. Yes, it demonstrates a feeling of a world lost to a joyless post-war depression, but there doesn't seem to be much in style or content that stood out to me at all. And to be completely honest, the audio quality completely ticked me off. Every time the narration comes in, you can hear the microphone turn on by the initiation of scratchy annoyance.

I read a fellow film blogger's analysis of this, and he completely adored it. I wouldn't mind if somebody could convince me to see this film in a better light. Because right now, I'd take Crouching Tiger over this for Best Chinese Film Ever any day.

Fun Trivia (Stolen from IMDB):

• Voted the best Chinese-language film of all time by the Hong Kong Film Academy in 2004.
• Voted the best Chinese-language film of all time by the Hong Kong Film Critics Society in 2002.

#428: The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)

Original Title: Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (Eng: Every Man for Himself and God Against All)

Director: Werner Herzog

Cast: Bruno S., Walter Ladengast & Brigitte Mira

SURPRISE! Starz has been kind enough to post the full video on YouTube! If you're interested, here's the link:

Kaspar Hauser appeared on the streets of Nuremberg in 1828. Nobody knew him. He carried a bible in one hand, an anonymous note in the other. He was unable to walk properly, and the only words he could speak were, "horse!", "don't know", and "I want to be a cavalryman, as my father was". The townspeople took care of him, teaching him to walk, speak, and other ways of civilization. When he was able, he explained that he had spent his whole life in a small room, being fed through a hole in the door. His unseen captor spoke only rarely. Years later, Hauser was attacked with a knife. He claimed he recognized his attacker's voice as his captor from his previous life. After another few years, Hauser was attacked again, fatally stabbed.

Oh, and this is a true story.

Nobody ever learned the true story behind Hauser. Many of his benefactors in Nuremberg complained that Hauser was a compulsive liar, and doubted his claims of being held in confinement. His speedy learning process hinted at this as well. Even his death is doubted - many believe he was trying to prolong the publicity he had come to know so well by stabbing himself.

Herzog decided to ignore all of that in his film. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser tells the tale of the boy from his own point of view. Instead of detailing the actual events with accuracy, Herzog uses the famous tale to question the conventions of society. Hauser is constantly baffled by conventional behaviors. For example, he asks why women can "only knit and cook". He is also completely repulsed when he is showcased one evening by an upper-class Englishman who hopes to adopt Hauser - most likely to flaunt his possession of such an enigma.

The strangest part of the film by far is the casting. Herzog decided not to cast a teenager for Hauser, which would have been appropriate. Instead, he cast 42-year-old Bruno S., the street performer and son of a prostitute. Bruno's life was (and continues to be, to this day,) a difficult one. After his mother died early in Bruno's life, he became what the Nazis called an ausschusskinder, or discarded child - a term no longer used in Germany. These children were sent to psychiatric clinics where the Nazis performed experiments. Bruno's state of mind has always been questionable, which has led to controversy whether he knew what he was doing with Herzog, and whether Herzog took advantage of Bruno's state of mind.

Ebert described this film as 'lyrical', which is as precise of a description as you will come to find. It isn't fantastic acting or even remarkable visually, but the storytelling is thought-provoking, seeing the world from the eyes of somebody who had never experienced it before.

Fun Trivia (Stolen from IMDB):

• No trivia available :( But at least you have the whole movie linked above!

#440: Akira (1988)

Director: Katsuhiro Otomo
Cast (English Voices): Johnny Yong Bosch, Joshua Seth & Wendee Lee

Akira is considered the quintessential anime film, reinvigorating the genre in the late ‘80s which led to the cult following the style holds today. Based on the first six volumes of the popular manga of the same title, Akira visualizes a post-WWIII Tokyo. Chaos fills the streets with motorcycle gangs and terrorist attacks wreaking havoc. When Tetsuo, a member of the motorcycle gang called ‘The Capsules’, almost hits an eerie looking child with his bike, his world turns upside down. The government takes him to a hospital where they find that his brainwaves are similar to Akira, a boy who has been accused of causing WWIII.

The animation for this film is phenomenal. The cityscapes are horrific yet ornate. The buildings in a post-nuclear holocaust setting are frightfully realistic, and the social disorder believable. The film is also acknowledged as the first anime to feature lip-synched dialogue, allowing the style to progress into something more fluid and more appealing to the eye.

There are some beautiful scenes throughout the film – most notably a scene in which Tetsuo is hallucinating in his hospital room. Unfortunately, the plot is a bit convoluted. Akira was an enormous project, attempting to fit almost 2,200 pages of manga into a 2-hour film. I had many, many questions coming out of the film. Thankfully the IMDB message board sorted me out. I urge anyone else who has seen the film to look up the answers to their questions, because really… the movie on its own doesn’t quite do it. Still enjoyable, though!

Fun Trivia (Stolen from IMDB):

• At one point in the 1990s, Sony contemplated a live-action version of the film, but scrapped the idea when the projected budget went north of US$300 million.
• The production budget was nearly $10 Million US Dollars, a record sum in Japanese animation film.
• The movie consists of 2,212 shots and 160,000 single pictures, 2-3 times more than usual, using 327 different colors (another record in animation film), 50 of which were exclusively created for the film. The reason for this statistic is that most of the movie takes place at night, a setting that is traditionally avoided by animators because of the increased color requirements.

#447: Ten (2002)

Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Cast: Mania Akbari, Amin Maher ...

Ten conversations shot from the dashboard of a car describe society in Tehran in 2002. The driver speaks with her son, a religious woman, a prostitute, and a friend who just broke up with her long-term boyfriend. Through these conversations, a mosaic is created, formulating a picture of female repression in a culture where religion is weaved into every aspect of a person's life.

This is a film with a lot of potential to expose the problems in Iranian society, but it simply doesn't do much (for me at least). I'm gonna have to agree with Ebert - one of the few with a negative review of this film - when he said that this film is not something to watch, but something to read about.

Supposedly these conversations were based on real ones which the main actress had had in her life, which gives the film a bit of credibility. The format of the film is similar to a documentary, and the acting is perfectly believable. The fact that it has a foundation in real life is a nice thing to know when viewing.

Certainly an interesting view... if only it went somewhere. It's interesting to see that Empire chose this film for the list and not one of the others by Kiarostami, who had one the Palme d'Or for Ta'm e guilass.

Sorry for not posting the trailer today, kids - couldn't find one anywhere.

Fun Trivia (Stolen from IMDB):

• Chosen by "Les Cahiers du cinéma" (France) as one of the 10 best pictures of 2002 (#01, with "Choses secrètes")

#459: Ikiru (1952)

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Cast: Takashi Shimura, Miki Odagiri...

Kanji Watanabe is in a waiting room when another patient tells him what symptoms characterize stomach cancer, and what the doctor always says to cover up this fact: "it's a mild ulcer" and "eat whatever you like as long as it's digested easily". Watanabe is ashen-faced as he listens, hearing his very own symptoms listed. When the doctors tell him it's a mild ulcer, Watanabe knows he only has a year left to live.

His work at Tokyo's town hall consists of stamping files without looking at them to prove that they've been examined. Nothing is ever done, and nobody seems to want to change this. Watanabe has worked there for thirty years, and only now realizes that though he is going to die, he's been dead his whole life. He encounters a fellow employee, Toyo, who hates working at the office, which doesn't match her vibrant personality. Watanabe is inspired by her energy, though he can't seem to find any for himself. When Toyo explains that she keeps her energy by doing something that she loves and helps others in doing so, Watanabe is determined to make changes at the office.

The second act of the film takes place at Watanabe's wake. The employees are pondering Watanabe's change in personality in the last few months of his life, unsure what caused such an abrupt turn of character. Through flashbacks, we see Watanabe's trials to make a change in the office, and the impact it made on his co-workers as well as the residents of Tokyo.

This is an incredible film. It's the first on the list that received 100% on RottenTomatoes, and there's no doubt why. The film is like a combination between Citizen Kane, Atlas Shrugged and It's a Wonderful Life. Although it's apparent how far behind Japan was from Hollywood at the time as far as the quality of the image goes, this really deserves to be better known.

One of the things that is just mind-boggling about the film is its place in a historical perspective. This was made just seven years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and in those few short years the country made huge strides towards the empowerment of the individual. Ikiru's story must have simply melted hearts - even more so than it does today.

The great thing about the acting is how ordinary Watanabe is. He could be just about anyone, and that's what makes this film so strong. Watanabe is in no way extraordinary aside from his extreme desire to be useful to the community. Any one of us could be that, and in doing so, we have the potential to inspire others. However, this takes a surprisingly realistic twist. A description of the final scenes, starting at Watanabe's wake, from the fantastic analysis by blogger "Mystery Man on Film":

The mourners know the events immediately leading up to his death but not his inner mind. Kurosawa depicts drunken mourners disparaging the bureaucratic system, usurping credit for the playground from Watanabe, and finally claiming superficially, “I’ll work at it like I’m a man reborn…sacrifice the self to serve the many.” However, the next scene presents a mirror image of the opening scene: the chief officer, sitting in Watanabe’s place, passes off a potential project to the Engineering Department. One man stands up in silent protest, only to be submerged behind stacks of paper. Such an explicit failure to internalize and act on Watanabe’s lesson provides the strongest incentive to viewers to avoid such similar fate.

I'm extremely excited to watch more of Kurosawa's films, which allegedly are all just as brilliant. Two huge-ass thumbs up.

#472: Le Doulos (1962)

Director: Jean-Pierre Melville

Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo & Serge Reggiani

You never know who is intended to be the protagonist in this film noir brought to the French New Wave era. The film begins with a murder. Faugel, an ex-convict, kills his old friend Gilbert and buries the jewelry and cash they stole together from a previous job. He then plans a robbery with his accomplice, Rémy, using tools borrowed from Silien, a police informer. When the robbery goes wrong, Faugel is sure Silien is behind the busted operation.

Melville really never lets you know exactly what's going on. Aside from a plot packed with twists and turns, he even dresses the two main characters similarly, oftentimes focusing the camera anywhere but their faces, so you don't even know who you're watching. "This, coupled with a habit that some of them have of straightening their hats before a mirror, perhaps suggests they are interchangeable, playing different games by the same rules." I snubbed that from Ebert, who is on the ball with this idea.

But even Ebert says that he'd give a "shiny new dime" to whoever can explain the film all the way through. This makes me feel a bit better about myself, as I had no idea. I rarely do in film noir, to be honest.

I have a bit of beef on this film. Yeah, the plot (once explained via this fantastic film summary) is impressive. But the style? I'm a bit WTFified. Melville (who changed his name because of his adoration for the author) is obviously obsessed with American culture. The characters are wearing American-style clothing, and they are driving American cars (which barely fit in the Parisian roads). Is that necessary? Why not just make an American movie? Or make this film more authentically French? I just don't understand the need to mix the two.

Also, when people shoot each other in this film, it's ultra fake. C'mon, this film was made 30 years after film noir started hitting it big... so you can at try to up the quality.

Fun Trivia (Stolen from - SURPRISE! - that film summary I mentioned. IMDB had nothin'.)

• Melville was obsessed with men's costuming. While he was completely one-sided on his opinion that all men wearing a gun also need to wear a hat, he didn't care at all what women wore.
• Though the novel was full of underworld slang, Melville decided not to use any in his film.
• In response to accusations that the film is mysogynistic, Melville wrote that the critics are "totally false. the women in my film aren't as ordinary as they seem."
• "Le Doulos" (pronounced doo-LOHS, where the S is pronounced) can be translated as somebody who wears a fedora-like hat called a "doule". Originally, this was what policemen wore, but soon gangster's took on the style as well.

#480: The Son's Room (2001)

Director: Nanni Moretti

Cast: Nanni Moretti, Laura Morante, Jasmine Trinca & Giuseppe Sanfelice

In his Palme d'Or-winning film, Moretti uses an undiluted style to reveal the grieving process of a family for their son, Andrea. Giovanni, a psychotherapist and father, asks his son Andrea to go for a jog, but before they do, the phone rings. Giovanni's client is having a crisis, and desperately needs to see him. Consequently, Andrea decides to meet some friends to go diving, where he is killed in an accident. This shatters the lives of Giovanni and his family, as well as Giovanni's clients. As time goes on, we see the family struggle from denial to anger, and finally bringing the pieces together and accepting their present state.

The stages of grief are extremely well represented in this film. I was able to relate to each of the characters throughout, without any frills at all.

There's really not much else to say about this film. It's a touching and simple film. One thumb for emotion... but everybody should know by now I like to go for movies that make you think. This requires no thinking, just feeling.

Fun Trivia (Stolen from IMDB):

• The Latin lines that crop up are from Lucretius' De rerum natura. The full passage reads as follows: "Haec sic pernosces parva perductus opella; namque alid ex alio clarescet nec tibi caeca nox iter eripiet, quin ultima naturai pervideas: ita res accendent lumina rebus. (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura I, 1114-1117) An (old-fashioned) English translation: "These points, if thou wilt ponder, Then, with but paltry trouble led along... For one thing after other will grow clear, Nor shall the blind night rob thee of the road, To hinder thy gaze on Nature's Farthest-forth. Thus things for things shall kindle torches new."
• Chosen by "Les Cahiers du cinéma" (France) as one of the 10 best pictures of 2001 (#09)

#485: The Wicker Man (1973)

Director: Robin Hardy

Cast: Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento & Britt Ekland

On Summerisle, a small island off the coast of western Scotland, a girl has gone missing. When Sergeant Howie arrives at Summerisle, he encounters a very hospitable and charming village, but something is wrong. Nobody seems to believe that the missing girl has ever existed - even the girl's own mother. As time passes, more and more of the townspeople's strange practices are revealed, until their underlying darker side is finally revealed.

The singular impressive feature of this film is its use of suspense and pacing. From the beginning, Hardy shows us a beautiful northern British culture, pulling us in even further with an authentic-sounding folk soundtrack scored by Paul Giovanni. The realization that the townspeople are hiding something occurs early on, but how can such a happy society hide something as dark as the murder of a missing child? Hardy allows his audience to view Sgt. Howie as the darker of characters, clinging fervently to his Christian faith. It is Sgt. Howie who speaks of rotting corpses, while the townspeople have a light and happy view of reincarnation as hares and other animals. Only at the riveting finale are we finally exposed to the true dark nature of the townspeople.

The Wicker Man has sadly become a dated film, with not much holding it together but the single question: What have the townspeople done to Rowan Morrison? It's easy to say why Neil LaBute decided to recreate this film, though it appears he's been thoroughly unsuccessful in that endeavor (though I can't say - I've never seen it). It's still a very intriguing film, and I'd recommend it to any film buffs out there.

Fun Trivia (Stolen from IMDB):

• Christopher Lee agreed to appear in this film for free.
• The film gives it's name to a music and arts festival (The Wickerman Festival) which has been held annually in the area where the film was shot (Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland) since 2004. At the end of the festival a giant Wicker Man sculpture is burned as a 'sacrifice to the festival gods'.
• According to director 'Robin Hardy', Howie's final speech is based upon Walter Raleigh's dying words.

#488: Princess Mononoke (1997)

Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Cast (English version): Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Minnie Driver

Note: Viewed a few days ago, to help explain the closeness between this post and the previous.

Miyazaki’s first film to become widely recognized in America is the story of Prince Ashitaka and Princess Mononoke. Ashitaka comes from a village in the east where nature is worshipped and technology unheard of. When Ashitaka defends the town from an attacking giant boar who is possessed by a demon, his arm becomes possessed as well before he kills the boar and finds inside it a piece of metal inside the body. To heal the cursed arm, he travels west to find the Spirit of the Forest. In doing so, he discovers Iron Town, a city whose main source of income is their forge. Attacking the city are both the apes who want to replant the trees the humans ripped down, as well as the wolves and their human ‘daughter’, Princess Mononoke. Throughout the film, Ashitaka urges both the animals and humans to stop the violence, or else the hatred which possesses his arm will consume them all.

Miyazaki’s greatest talents are texture and landscape. Each location drawn has a feel to it, and through both the animation and the sound effects, you can almost feel the gravel under your feet or the moss on your hands. The music by Joe Hisaishi is also an accomplishment, using almost exclusively western music standards but with melodies of Japanese flavor.

I have two criticisms for the film. First, I’ve always found it just too long. There were loads of opportunities to cut down the time, and Disney/Miramax agrees with me; they tried to convince Studio Ghibli to give permission to slim down the length, but Ghibli refused. My second criticism is the voice acting. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always found Claire Danes’ voice to be very piercing, and Billy Crudup always seems to be either yelling or whispering, rarely finding a middle ground.

The film is certainly a spectacle, but this Princess Mononoke will never compare to Spirited Away.

Fun Trivia (Stolen from IMDB):

• Mononoke-hime (1997) replaced E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) as the biggest grossing film of all time in Japan until Titanic (1997).
• Hayao Miyazaki had intended to this be be his final film before retiring. Its great success led him to do another, Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001).
• Mononoke means angry or vengeful spirit. Hime is the Japanese honorific/word meaning Princess which is placed after a persons name rather than before it, as in the western system. When the films title was translated into English, it was decided that Mononoke would be left as a name rather than translated literally.

#492: Amores Perros (2000)

Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu

Cast: Gael García Bernal, Gustavo Muñoz, Goya Toledo, y muchos perros

The fragility of a dog's well-being is exposed in Iñárritu's first full-length film. Similar to his later work, Babel, this film has three interweaving stories which all literally crash together when two cars collide at an intersection. The first story is of Mexico City's dogfighting underworld, and the family who is using it to survive. The second is a straightforward story of a magazine editor and his new love interest whose dog gets stuck under the floorboards of their new apartment. The final plot tells the life of a hobo and his pack of dogs. When the man is hired to kill a man's business partner, he takes the case a step further than what was demanded.

Considering its low estimated budget of $2m, this film is a huge accomplishment. At 2.5 hours long, the camerawork is consistently impressive. The acting is all top notch, and the scenes with action are all very realistic. However, I feel that Iñárritu's style is in a rut.

It appears that Iñárritu is trusting his closest friends completely with his films, seeing that he casts the same actors often, the same composer often, and his style in itself doesn't seem to change. He's obsessed with the multiple-plot outlines. Personally, I find that in this style, none of his plots have enough time to have any major twists, yet with all of them combined, the film is just a bit too long.

It was heartbreaking to see the treatment of dogs in each part of society. Even in the upper class, the dogs were represented as ignored, second-class citizens - maybe even as slaves. It was truly an eye-opener to see that dogfighting isn't the only abuse a dog can suffer from. And I gave my two dogs a big hug once the credits finished.

I'll give the film one thumb up.

Fun Trivia (Stolen from IMDB):

• The car crash sequence was shot with nine simultaneous cameras, including two on adjacent rooftops and one hidden in a trash barrel. In the second and final take, the model's car spun around, overshot its projected target by at least 100 meters, and smashed into a taxicab parked by the side of the road.
• Unlike most films, a disclaimer stating that no animals were harmed in the making of the movie comes at the beginning instead of being buried in the credits.
• The Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in England filed a complaint to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) about a 21-second dog fight scene.

#497: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Director: Ang Lee

Cast: Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Ziyi Zhang

It's really too bad this film has been parodied so often, because it really is a great film. I guess that's just what happens to the good ones, though.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon tells the story of warriors Li Mu Bai and Shu Lien. Known to be the bravest and strongest warriors in China, they still aren't courageous enough to express their feelings for each other. When Li Mu Bai's famed 'Green Destiny' sword goes missing, Shu Lien finds herself protecting the young Jen from the authorities - and from herself.

Although a simple story, Ang Lee found ways to make this film into a masterpiece. Each aspect of the film works in unison with the next. As Shu Lien notices, the action sequences are motioned in a similar style as Jen's fluid strokes of calligraphy. Not only is the choreography flawless, but the camerawork seems to have been just as much a part of the choreography as the fighting. And of course, Tan Dun's score is quite an achievement - especially considering he had only two weeks to write and record it.

The only problem with the film is the length. A full two hours, you definitely need to be in the right state of mind to watch this straight through with undivided attention. I also would love to learn Mandarin to understand the script. A friend told me once that the entire script was in an old Mandarin dialect - almost Shakespearean. It would certainly be an improvement to some of the English subtitles provided.

Fun Trivia (Stolen from IMDB):

• "Crouching tiger hidden dragon" is a quote from Chinese mythology. It refers to hiding your strength from others; advice which is followed too well by the characters in the film.
• In Chinese, Lo's name is "Little Tiger", and Jen's name is "Gorgeous Dragon".
• The film's action choreographer, Woo-ping Yuen, was also responsible for the fighting sequences in The Matrix (1999) and its progeny.
• The four main actors all spoke Mandarin, but with different accents. Yun-Fat Chow had a Cantonese accent, Michelle Yeoh had a Malaysian/English accent, Ziyi Zhang had a Beijing accent, and Chen Chang had a Taiwanese accent. Because of the difficulty some Chinese-speaking markets had with the voices, some markets actually had a dubbed version (into standard Mandarin) of the soundtrack.
• The stamped documents shown by Shu Lien to the guards at the city-gate before she enters Beijing shows the date "In the of 43rd year of the reign of (Emperor) Qianlong, the sixth month, the eighth day", which is the year A.D. 1778, somewhere in June or July.