(This was written back in September, I apologize for having never posted it)
The Grandmaster follows the stories of Ip Man and Gong Er, martial artists who meet in 1936 when Gong's father gives up his position as the leader of a union of Northern-style martial artists and comes South to challenge whomever the southern martial artists decide to send. Ip Man, a Wing Chun practitioner, is that man. He defeats Gong's father in a battle of wits, after defeating several of his lieutenants in the bagua and xingyi styles. Gong fights him afterward, feeling that her family's honor has been slighted by her father yielding to Ip, and defeats him. He promises to challenge her to a rematch on her home soil some time in the future. However, war and occupation by Japan makes this impossible, and thirteen years pass before they meet again, accidentally, in Hong Kong.
Ip Man is the vehicle by which we are told Gong Er's story; while nominally the movie is about his journey from Foshan to becoming the man who popularized Wing Chun and taught Bruce Lee, the story as we see it begins and ends with Gong Er. Her journey as a woman martial artist is the backbone and most compelling part of the admittedly loosely-plotted film, which is more of a series of vignettes than anything really cohesive -- a good stylistic choice for a biographical picture, but not something wide audiences may be familiar or comfortable with.
It's a risk that I'm not sure pays off; I can easily imagine people mistaking this for an action movie and leaving disappointed because it isn't. Ultimately, it's a thematic exploration of the principles involved with deeply pursuing something like kung fu, and it to me comes off like the film equivalent of literary fiction. Not quite Oscar Bait, but very close.
Cinematically, it's absolutely beautiful. Every shot is heavily choreographed and beautifully framed, and the fight scenes are gorgeous both from the perspective of an aspiring cinematographer and that of a martial artist who has practiced, like Ip Man, from the age of seven. From what I know, the styles are all accurate, and shot in ways that best show off the ultimate gist of the styles -- it's easy to differentiate between 64 hands, wing chun, baji, bagua, and xingyi, the five styles most prominently on display throughout the film. Slow motion, when it occurs, never feels gimmicky or cheesy, and the absolutely opulent set design is always shown in the most effective ways for every given shot.
The score, also, is wonderfully done -- while I generally have no ear at all for music, the music in this movie was appropriate for every scene and for the time periods in which it was set. It immersed me even further in the world of Gong Er and Ip Man, and I remain impressed.
My biggest compliment for this film, however, is that it really, really makes me want to train more often. Sitting in the theatre felt like I was being taught something, as though the story I was being told was meant, really, to make me a better martial artist and person. It also, somehow, never felt preachy about it, whic was really, really impressive.
Overall, taking the genre into account, I would give this movie a 3.5 on a 4-star scale. I haven't looked at other reviews, but I'm pretty sure I'll be scoring it higher than a layperson would -- this isn't a popcorn flick about men beating the crap out of each other, and if you go in expecting that, you'll be really, really disappointed.
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