Tony Leung, Samuel L. Jackson and Wong Kar Wai attend ‘The Grandmaster’ New York Screening after party at Forty Four at the Royalton presented by DeLeon Tequila, The Weinstein Company and Dolby on August 13, 2013 in New York City
The Source Magazine sat down with Legendary filmmaker Wong Kar-wai to discuss he new Kung Fu masterpiece “The Grandmaster,” which is now playing.
The Weinstein Company’s “The Grandmaster,” which is being presented nationally by Samuel L. Jackson and Martin Scorsese is the highly-anticipated new film by acclaimed director Wong Kar Wai. Six years in the planning and three years in the making, the film is an epic action feature inspired by the life and times of the legendary kung fu master, Ip Man. The story spans the tumultuous Republican era that followed the fall of China’s last dynasty, a time of chaos, division and war that was also the golden age of Chinese martial arts. Filmed in a range of stunning locations that include the snow-swept landscapes of Northeast China and the subtropical South, the film features virtuoso performances by some of the greatest stars of contemporary cinema. Wong Kar Wai has made a kung fu film like no other. Years of research before production and a virtual battalion of martial arts trainers on set ensured that “The Grandmaster” portrays both the Chinese martial arts and the world of the martial artists with unprecedented authenticity, with fight scenes choreographed by renowned action choreographer Yuen Wo Ping. The trio of international superstars at the film’s heart – Tony Leung, Ziyi Zhang and Chang Chen – all underwent several years of rigorous and extremely challenging kung fu training for their roles.
Check out our interview with the film’s director Wong Kar-wai below:
Since this film is based on a real life person, who people still know and remember and it’s also based on real martial arts, not imaginary fancy martial arts and their philosophies, does it affect your approach in terms of research and narrative?
Sure because when you look at the film, especially on the extra scenes, you can’t have to many liberties because first of all, Tony and Ziyi are not from a martial art backgrounds. I wanted them to perform all the action themselves, so all the actions had to be very precise. And so you need to take weeks of choreography and rehearsal and you had to work with the camera, so like I said, everything has to be very precise. And also, because I want to tell the story of this young man, which is totally correct. Because I don’t want to show him like a fighter or just to make up an atmosphere about fighting Japanese or Western fighters, because it didn’t happen. I know it’s to make him more heroic, but in this film, what I find is that it is more heroic for him to fight not with a physical fight but fight with a time, his ups and downs. Because when we look at his life story, he was born with a serious wound, and in the end of his life, he lost everything except the commitment to martial arts. And he went through so many different periods and to remain at the end, the last man standing.
It’s a stunning visual tour of this story. Can you talk about how you planned the visual shots of the film?
We had to deal with the actions and I’m sure the camera is always moving. But the hard part about this martial arts scene is that we are not doing it with a dancing choreographer. We just had trainers on set and we just wanted to make sure all the moves are correct and precise. And sometimes you work with trainers because they are the masters of that school. They don’t know about films, so during rehearsal there was a while that if he sounds good, we don’t need to fight for a few minutes. It’s one punch and that’s it, it’s so fast that you won’t see it. But you can’t do it like this for films. You have to carefully ask them to do the demonstrations and you have to look at the move and what is the essence of the move, because if you were to talk about a punch, it’s not the coordination of the fist, but the coordination of the whole body. It’s how the foot works and the tricks of the body and the shoulder and you have to show the power of the strike because that’s why we need the range and you can see the contrast. And you have to shoot with different speeds of the cameras and also for the whole film, because there are so many actions and someone is always on the move, I prefer for the most difficult scene of the film, I prefer the camera to be static because when we look at research, at that time, the only thing you can get are only photos. And most of them are not group photos; they are very casual shots, meeting group shots, product shots and so on. And I think it would be interesting to make this film by an album. We edit the other characters with a very formal group shot of family photos. And at the end of the film when they have this farewell at the teahouse, the camera is basically very simple. The camera is not moving. Focus, cut back and forth, and I find that very powerful.
Could you talk about the gender issues in the film? Why they didn’t want women to do Kung fu?
In fact, it really is like this because in martial arts, especially in the thirties, there’s no place for women. So you get looked at to see that you can’t succeed at successors and they would pass on the skill to the daughter in law. Because with the daughter you know the skill will stay with the family. So to be a woman at that point, you have the duty to be a good wife and a good mother, and you’re not supposed to be a martial artist. And also what’s interesting about this film is that both Ip man and Gong Er, they are not supposed to be martial artists. Ip Nan was supposed to be a businessman. She came from a rich family in Hong Kong and was educated in a Catholic school. So they fight for their journey and they made their choice to go into these directions and pursue their passions.
I notice there are three screenwriters including yourself for the film, so could you talk about, in terms of writing, what aspect did you write the story?
When you look at the film, the film basically has three chapters. One chapter is in the thirties in the front, and the other chapters are in the forties, in the north Manchuria states, and it also ended up in Hong Kong in the fifties. And almost half of the film is about people from the north because of the languages and the dialects. So it’s really hard for me to do it by myself. So I’m very happy to have two good writers and who were my partners because they know it and one of them is from the Manchuria background so they have to help me to make all these lines right.
What was it about Ip Man that you found fascinating?
I think a lot of people follow martial arts because of Bruce Lee and what’s so iconic about this is that he’s very iconic like a martial artist and very charismatic and most of all, he’s very civilized. He’s well educated and knows how to express this idea and when you look at all of his interviews and books written by him, you can see a lot of his inspirations came from his family. And when you look at the background of him, we don’t know much. We know about his younger days in the south, there’s no archive or photo, but I can imagine. He’s the Bruce Lee of his time because he is very modern and efficient.
Tony mentioned that you played a lot of music and so why do you play and what inspires you on set?
To me it’s to tell the story and to tell the rhythm especially in this film, because we have to have a rhythm for myself. I need to have the rhythm to coordinate between the camera and the actors. The blocking of the camera has to be a certain way and I want them to be in sync with the rhythm of the move, so I think it’s very effective.
Check out the trailer for the film, where RZA narrates.
