A&O Movie Pick: "The Grandmaster" - Triumph of Style and Kinetics

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Manohla Dargis
HOLLYWOOD---“The Grandmaster,” a hypnotically beautiful dream from the Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, opens with curls of smoke, eddies of water and men soaring and flying across the frame as effortlessly as silk ribbons. The men are warriors, street fighters with furious fists and winged feet, who have massed together on a dark, rainy night to take on Ip Man (Tony Leung), a still figure in a long coat and an elegant white hat. However much history informs this movie, “The Grandmaster” is, at its most persuasive, about the triumph of style. [link]

The Grandmaster” is rated PG-13 (2hr 10min‎ - ‎Rated PG-13‎ - ‎Action‎). Mostly nonbloody martial arts violence. A&O Night: Saturday, August 31 at 7pm, AMC Showplace Indianapolis 17 - 4325 South Meridian Street, Indianapolis

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Comments

Wong is known for multiple versions of his movies. A 130-minute edit of “The Grandmaster” opened the Berlin Film Festival in February, but the American release is 22 minutes shorter. Although cuts may have been made throughout the film, the World War II section feels the most truncated. The movie holds together reasonably well, however, perhaps because it’s one of Wong’s most conventional narratives. That probably reflects the influence of Xu Haofeng, who co-scripted with Wong, or that the story is taken, however loosely, from real life. Yet the rueful soliloquies, stately compositions, exquisite cinematography and dreamlike passages all identify “The Grandmaster” as a Wong Kar-wai film. The director took great efforts to be true to Chinese martial arts, but he did so without sacrificing his own distinctive vision.
Better than even I expected. What a beautiful and powerfully told story of faith, love, vows and legacies. It's another definite for several Oscar nominations.

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