Alphabetical movie - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Having recently written about how Crocodile Dundee is almost embarassingly sexist when viewed through a 2011 lens, it is interesting that I followed that film up with a movie that could almost be called empowering.
It is always challenging, as a guy, to talk about good strong women in film. It isn't that I'm not permitted to do so but my perception of what constitutes empowerment doesn't matter as much as what women themselves perceive. When they watch the protagonists of this film, do they see strong characters because the ladies kick serious Kung-Fu ass or do they see the weakness inherent in their character flaws?
I mean, if you write a character correctly, character flaws are kind of important. We all have them. Yet the two main characters in this film are, at times, defined by their flaws.
Jen, most of all, is a prideful little brat. She has every advantage, isn't satisfied with that, finds a boyfriend who is a romanticists wet dream, is a master fighter with only limited formal training and yet when she is given the chance to be trained in martial arts typically reserved only for men, she refuses the offer.
Her mentor, Jade Fox, might be the most sympathetic character in the film. Yeah, she's a murderer and a thief and pretty much a bad seed. On the other hand, she has become that way because she is a woman who was denied the opportunity to be a warrior because of her sex.
Yu is actually a pretty solid character. Smart, powerful and loyal, she stands by Jen even when Jen is treating her like crap and waits for a day when she may be with the man she loves without ever seeming to sacrifice her own life as she waits. She can be faulted for failing to push for a relationship with Li and yet, the reticence seems to rest more with him than it does with her.
The film is never about the relationship between Li and Yu. Instead, it is about the relationship between Yu and Jen. Two powerful women in a society that does not value powerful women.
Li is important because he is a man in that society who values these two women. One is offered assistance and refuses. The other he loves but he fails to offer her his heart.
Creating a film about feminine empowerment set in Imperial China is pretty challenging because such a thing really didn't exist. You have to stretch the boundaries of realism a little bit but given you have people engaging in a sword fight on trees, you have already stretched them plenty.
I think does a good job of defining the female characters outside of their relationships. Jen has her desert thief boyfriend whom she clearly loves and yet when she escapes her "sentence" of an arranged marriage, it is not at all clear she is doing so to be with him. Yu, as I've said, is a successful business woman and fighter who is not defined by her unspoken love for Li.
As I say, my perception of these characters as a male is that they are stronger than the average screamer in an action film. They are capable and never seem defined by their sex except as they are defined by the society of which they are a part.
Crocodile Dundee was not trying to be a sexist movie, it just could help it. I'm not sure the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was trying to be a feminist movie but - at least in part - it is one.
Also, the fight scenes are pretty freakin' awesome.
Next up, the surprisingly not awful Curious George!