Analysis Of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

Zack Kawasaki
Nam Lee
Asian Cinema
November 16, 2016
FS 443/543 East Asian Cinema Take-home Midterm Exam
1. Diasporic cinema is any film making surrounding a community that is not a part of its country of origin. Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon can be identified as a diasporic film, and this can be traced back to simply Lee’s birth. Lee is of Taiwanese decent and reportedly had never been to China before shooting Crouching Tiger. This can be seen throughout the film as it mystically depicts China through the eyes of the diasporic Lee. While the film was highly authentic, the authenticity was based on the world’s shared stereotypical view of China and not China itself. Ang Lee created a China he discovered through stories, films, and
Through narrative language and characters, Lee constructs a truly integrated, transnational China. The film follows Wudan warrior Li Mu Bai and his friend, Yu Shu Lien, on their pursuit to retrieve Green Destiny, a stolen sword. However, it also follows Yu Jiao Long as she runs away from an arrange marriage after stealing the sword. This film’s narrative structure differs from conventional hollywood films in many ways. For one, there are two main story lines that the audience follows: that of Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien’s forbidden love, and Yu Jiao Long’s journey with the Green Destiny as she runs away from her family’s preset path. There is no one linear story line but the convergence of two separate ones that tie together in the end. There is also no happy ending in either story line. Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien cannot be together out of respect for her late finance (Li Mu Bai’s) best friend. The entire
Gu Qing is a member of the army staying with a peasant family. He witnesses the terrified struggles a young girl, Cuiqiao, as she goes into an arranged marriage for the financial stability it will bring her family. She eventually decides to join the army that is camping on the other side of the Yellow River but the audience never knows if she reaches the other side, portraying the desperation she felt to escape her current way of life. The peasants of the story struggle with surviving off the “yellow land.” They villagers perform a rain dance because the crops are dying from the dry land. This Fifth Generation film critiques the Communist Party, exploiting their lie that they were supposed to fix the problems these peasants were facing. While the film ends, similarly to To Live, with the characters feeling optimistic for a better future, the message is a strong commentary on the ineffectiveness of a political party in