The artistry is not only of the martial kind

Originally published December 22, 2000

An act of courage, like an act of love, requires a leap of faith. It is with gravity and levity and incomparable grace that Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - by light years the best movie of 2000 - makes those leaps literally, with heroes and villains springing onto rooftops and treetops variously in pursuit of amour, adventure, revenge, righteousness, and a mystical broadsword called the Green Destiny.

Set in a China of the indefinite past, Crouching Tiger melds the legend of Mulan with the tales of King Arthur and Robin Hood. Meaning that it is a martial-arts fantasy with warrior women and chivalric knights and brazen bandits. Meaning that it is a breathtaking, heart-in-your-throat action romance that exists in a universe where the laws of gravity have been suspended and supplanted by the outlaws of desire.

Meaning that it transports you, with high velocity, to a privileged and enchanted realm that ranks with riding shot-arrow to Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood or hurtling through hyperspace with Harrison Ford in Star Wars.

In Ang Lee's Taoist swashbuckler, every hero has his nefarious counterpart and also his soul mate, every lush landscape its desert reciprocal, and every poison its antidote. The characters each bravely blaze a path between the extremes, typically while engaging in death-defying swordplay with each other. (That they are able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and fly from branch to branch on the tallest spires of bamboo seems entirely believable in this context, given their nimbleness, although they were assisted by cables and by the legendary Yuen Wo Ping, who choreographed The Matrix and directed Jackie Chan in Drunken Master. )

As the embodiments of maturity and of chastity, we have Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun Fat) and Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh). He is a seasoned swordsman about to retire his weapon, the Green Destiny, and she a weathered woman warrior whose profound gaze arouses volcanic passions beneath Li's armor of stoicism. (Think John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara.)

As the personifications of youth and sexuality, we have Princess Jen Yu (Zhang Ziyi) and the outlaw Lo (Chang Chen), teenage anarchists who disrupt the order that Li and Shu Lien have sacrificed their personal lives to maintain. (Think Lucy Liu and Brad Pitt, but with even glossier, more wondrous, hair. )

Complicating both sacred and profane love affairs, we have a witch of indefinite gender, a malicious Merlin named Jade Fox (Cheng Pei Pei), who seals everyone's fate by stealing the Green Destiny.

Understand that the heartstrings of all - including those in the audience - quiver to this story of plucky heroines and brooding heroes underscored by Yo-Yo Ma's solo cello.

A landscape painter among directors, Ang Lee has re-created with admirable delicacy the suburban sterility of Connecticut in The Ice Storm, the pregnant hillocks of Regency England in Sense and Sensibility, and the barren Midwest Civil War zone of Ride With the Devil. But nothing in his movie career foreshadows the vivid panoramas he frames in Crouching Tiger - deserts that resemble a Grand Canyon carved from carnelian, sylvan settings with cedars circling a sapphire lake, an aerial view of a Beijing whose ramparts resemble a set of nestling Chinese boxes.

But as in the great films of John Ford, Ang Lee understands that in movies a landscape is an extrusion, or extension, of character. His figures aren't merely in the landscapes, they are defined by them. Like the still pools that run deep are Li and Shu Lien. Like the rocky desert caves, hiding secrets and contraband, are Jen and Lo. While all of the actors are gorgeous and dashing and clad in flowing robes that are as graceful as their martial artistry, special mention must be made of the profound ability of Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh to maintain gravitas amid their anti-gravity footwork.

When it comes to emotions, a character in Crouching Tiger tells us, great heroes can be idiots. Not so this great movie, which brims with wisdom, revels in impetuousness, but also knows the value of restraint. Credit the source material, the novel by Wang Du Lu, and the judicious additions made by screenwriters James Schamus, Wang Hui Ling and Tsai Kuo Jung, and, most of all, the direction of Lee, who gives us star-crossed characters who define themselves in apposition to each other.

Like all great legends, there is so much going on in Crouching Tiger that it is foolhardy to try to extract just one couplet from this poem of dualisms. Several suggest themselves. Among them: That there are times for repression and times for expression; that humans most appreciate beauty in its relief from ugliness; that heroism could not exist without cowardice nor serenity without violence; and that heaven hath no pleasure like a woman empowered.