I watched this movie about a fortnight before the Oscar’s. The movie had excellent performances by the entire cast and even the action sequences were fluid & rapid. However, I felt a strange sense of déjà vu, and only when I came out of the movie hall, did I realize that it was too much like a Hindi Movie. Before you’ll can say ‘colonial SOB’, let me tell you, I love Hindi Movie’s, I try and watch every one I can (except for unmitigated disasters like suryavansham). I don’t mean to denigrate the director & the production team, I meant well made Hindi Movies (like Mission Kashmir etc). Though CTHD has great special effects and computer wizardry, Its nothing like our Hindi Movies, I mean, would we have any good hindi movie which slowed down the pace by having philosophical discussions between the action sequences.
But in most of the other aspects, CTHD is a twin to our Hindi masterpieces, There is a lack of regard for plot logic – Different characters in the movie appear at the right place at the right time when they had no way of knowing the address. Even though Jen has learnt the mysterious and magical Wu Dan from Jade Fox for many years, she loses a fight with a desert bandit. Typical Hindi Plot – Without Jen losing the fight, she cant fall in love with the bandit. And the crowning glory – When Mu Bai gets poisoned, Jen’s got to get the antidote ASAP, but instead of walking in air, jumping on houses and floating through tree’s (she keeps doing this through the movie); she RUNS. Any Hindi Film buff will recognize this convenient amnesia, which leads to desired emotional climaxes.
Like the western critic’s said – ‘High art meets high spirits in a rapturously romantic epic’, ‘A walking dream of truly operatic dimensions’, ‘The mystical orient, Guys are deep into Zen and Nirvana, Its mystical uber-truths in the meta-real awakened mind …’; Hold on guys, This is nothing of the sort, Its simply our Asian tradition, where the rules are simple, screw plot details and continuity as long as you can have a string of scenes where people declaim enthusiastically against each other (dialogue in Hindi Films) or beat one another up. CTHD is a series of stunning action sequences stuck together with makeshift logic (just like any respectable Hindi or Tamil Movie)
What CTHD has, which our movies don’t, is access to the latest technology (their visual fx team is from Hollywood). People jumping up four storeys ??? Hindi film heroes have been doing this for decades, with even back flips and somersaults thrown in. Its just that we don’t have the technology (or money) to make it look so dazzling. When Lee’s characters defy gravity and fight it mid air, the western audience thinks (and the westernized Indian) its some magical high art. Any Hindi film buff can tell you its no such thing; the director makes his characters fly because he wants to create a grand fantasy. As one of our celebrated director’s – Manmohan Desai, said – ‘I tell my script writers. Have men on horseback chasing each other on roofs of skyscrapers, who gives a damn how they got there’
In fact Western audiences are now waking up to like more and more movies which resemble our Hindi movies, Titanic – with its music and theme song, Face/off with its outrageous plot, It wont be long before Shah Rukh & Hritik charm the pants off the western audiences, what with their all round talent for acting, melodrama, tears, fights & to top it all – singing. How can Russel Crowe, Tom Hanks even compete. If one can fight, the other can only act. What about the singing ???
Like one of the critics said – ‘Crouching Tiger’s blend of the magical, the mythical and the romantic fills a need in us, we might not even realize we had’. I only want to tell him one thing ‘Watch Amar Akbar Anthony’
PS : I must confess, the seeds for this review came from an article by Sandipan Deb in a Newsmagazine, It was like reading something which has been going on in your mind.