The Grandmaster

The movie is about Ip Man, the famous martial artist who trained Bruce Lee, except in some ways it isn't.  It starts in the mid-1930s, and touches briefly on his life under Japanese occupation - his refusal to collaborate, the poverty as a result, the loss of two children to disease - and then his move to Hong Kong after the war, which separates him from his remaining family as he tries to provide for them. But a lot of this is mentioned almost in passing.

It's almost more about the Gong family, because Gong Yutian is considered a Grandmaster among the Northern schools in China, and he's retiring. He travels to Foshan and asks the various Southern schools to select someone as a challenger against him. Despite having few students, Ip Man is the one everyone agrees on, and according to Master Gong, he wins the challenge.

But there's a divide, in that Master Gong's greatest student is his daughter, Gong Er, but she's not really supposed to know martial arts, and can't inherit and carry forward the title of his school, due to being a woman. (When she challenges Master Ip after he passes her father's challenge, so of the other masters advise him not to accept, claiming fighting women is a taboo on par with fighting monks, children, or Taoists). Her father wants her to stay out of martial arts and become a doctor instead. The school's future is in the hands of Gong's top male disciple, even though he's headstrong, cocky and doesn't really get everything his master is about.

It feels like the movie takes its time showing us what she went through in the 13 years between her fighting Master Ip, and them meeting again in Hong Kong. Maybe that's just because it's not as well known, so the filmmakers wanted to flesh it out. But it comes off as kind of a missed opportunity. it sure seems like there's a spark between the two of them, and if Ip Man makes his planned trip north for a rematch as intended, who knows? Instead, the war happens.

The cinematography is kind of interesting. A lot of shots of shadows against a wall, with the light source moving, or light and shadow moving across a person's face. I'm not clear on what it's supposed to mean, but it looks cool. Maybe impulses inside the person that are struggling with each other. There's an obligatory big fight in the streets in the rain, although they get that out of the way early. I liked the fight on the railroad platform near the end.

And there's a lot of focus during the fights on the feet or the hands. Either the person skidding backwards after being struck, or shifting their positioning, which I'm assuming means they're switching styles, or moving from more defense to offense. The way the camera lingers on those shots sometimes made me think of Sergio Leone, when he would pause on the eyes, or the hand as it hovers over the pistol. Drawing out the moment before the violence happens. It's not entirely the same, since the fights here go on much longer than Leone's showdowns, but it has a similar effect when the camera watches Ip Man slide his front foot into a different stance. You know something is about to happen.