Lee, who’s helmed the great art house works Eat Drink Man Woman, Sense and Sensibility, and The Ice Storm, is not a director you’d associate with making martial arts films; he’s a master at weaving character-driven tales into intricate multi-layered films that reveal hidden truths and conflicts within society. And it’s his outsider distinction to the genre that makes him the perfect director to take on Wang Du Lu’s controversial romance (a novel banned for many years in China), in what should inevitably be considered the first ever fourth-generation martial arts film.

      The film is set in the early 19th century, when the Wuxia knights ruled the lands of China. The story begins with the heroic warrior Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat), who has returned home to retire his legendary sword Green Destiny, and finally put to rest his life of violence for the more introspective and peaceful path. He leaves his sword in the hands of his devoted counterpart Yu Shu Lien, played by a radiant Michelle Yeoh, so that she may bring the sword to Master Te in Bejing for safekeeping at his castle. There she meets the young and adventurous Jen (Zhang Ziyi), daughter of a local official who’s also engaged to be married, but has grander plans for herself. When the Green Destiny is stolen by night, Li Mu Bai catches wind and heads immediately to Bejing to join Shu Lien in finding the culprit and returning the sword. Here the plot becomes a joyously tangled web of deception, love, and glorious kung-fu ballet that is as breathtaking and moving as a film could ever be imagined.

      The characters move and react as if their emotions run through every atom in their bodies, floating seamlessly across buildings and along walls. Choreographed by the great Yuen Wo-Ping (Fist of Legend, The Matrix), he transports you into a fantastic world where physics do not matter and imagination becomes reality. Cinematographer Peter Pau turns every scene into a majestic painting, with his most beautiful work involving a flashback sequence through the desert. It’s like being immersed in a magnificent dream that you don’t realize until it’s over.

      In Chinese lore, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wu hu zang long) is a poetic and symbolic way to describe a treasure hidden beneath an unexpected place or situation. This metaphor works on many levels within the film, concurrently describing characters like Jen, objects like the magnificent Green Destiny, and emotions like the reticent love between Shu Lien and Mu Bai. Lee uniquely deals with the inner emotions of his characters, and extends that into an exploration of the legacy of classical Chinese culture. Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh are perfect in their roles, graceful and strong, but the hidden treasure of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is Zhang Ziyi, who plays young Jen. She’s the heart and soul of Ang Lee’s film, and her scenes are the energizing force that makes the audience thirst for more.

      What Ang Lee has accomplished with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is nothing short of a masterpiece of filmmaking. He has rediscovered a poetry that has escaped much of modern filmmaking, harmonized the roles of drama and martial arts in a film, and reset the bar for an entire genre. Though the film is dubbed entirely in mandarin with english subtitles, don’t do yourself the disservice and miss out on the Best Film of the Year.

Stephen Wong, 2000