I just realized that not only has Ip Man 2 been released but it's also on Netflix. It's very well done. I made reference to the first Ip Man movie with Donnie Yen in a previous post. I like Wing Chun. I have mad harsh respect for the arts. The most stirring message from this movie is the importance of respecting the dignity of others. Nobody likes a bully. On that note I found two more inspiring quotes. The first is from one of Ip Man's students, the infamous Bruce Lee.
The other is from the Dalai Lama himself.
Update: I not sure how historically acurate Ip Man 2 is. It seemed more like a fictional remake of Rocky 4 where he takes on the Russian after Apollo fails only in reverse. Likewise in the first movie it appears that the big fight between Ip Man and a Japanese general simply never happened in real life. Ip Man went to Hong Kong in 1949 to flee the Communist uprising IRL becasue he was an officer in the rival political party, the Kuomintang or Chinese Nationalist Party.
I will note that both Ip Man movies are in Cantonese not Mandarin. Cantonese is spoken in Hong Kong. Mainland China is trying to kill the language and replace it with Mandarin. Perhaps the hidden meaning behind the movie is to stand up to all bullies both foreign and domestic. Peace.
Yo! Mike Tyson is in Ip Man 3! David and Goliath hits the big screen. It's on DVD.
Whoa, it looks like Dr Smythe is right in that the Communist government of China had an influence in the production of the movie which may explain why it is so historically inaccurate. I was watching the opening credits for another Donnie Yen movie called Special ID and saw a very suspicious looking logo for the China Film Co Ltd. Wikipedia claims that the China Film Group Corporation is the largest and most influential state-owned film enterprise in China. According to Forbes it is a state monopoly that all imported films have to work with. I still think Ip Man is a great movie as long as you realize it is pure fantasy and is not historically accurate.
I'm going to have to weigh in on this one. The Ip Man movies are really nothing more than communist propaganda wrapped in a popular, exciting form. The first movie portray's the Japanese as nothing but evil and the second does the same to the British Empire.
ReplyDeleteSadly, this is nothing new. Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan were involved in the same type of propaganda movies demonizing foreigners and non-communists.
They (the movies) may be well done and may have pretty exciting scenes to them, but that does not change (nor hide!) the true purpose behind them.
A test of the bigotry presented in these two movies would be to reverse the presentation of the Chinese to Japanese in the first one and the Chinese to the British in the second one. The public outcry against such movies would get them banned.
Wow. You have got to be kidding. That's kinda straight out of the Twilight Zone : )
DeleteChinese history and culture predates Communism and is completely separate from it. The only bigotry I've seen was from the colonization of the British empire.
Japan has a wonderful culture and history that predates fascism. Sadly, like Ireland, they did elect a fascist government at one point and did some pretty nasty things to prisoners of war. Korea is still bitter over that dark era. Yet we can all learn from our history and move past it.
It is true that Hong Kong was better off under British Rule than Communist rule but neither represent a free republic. I worked as a chef in London England when I was young. I was standing at a buffet carving roast ham and turkey. A fat Brit comes up to me and hearing my accent asks me where I was from. I said Canada. He points to the yorkshire pudding and said do you know what those are? Yes I said. We do have those in Canada. He smiled and said ah it's good to know they're educating the colonies. I just about lunged over the table and grabbed his throat. Colonies? I bit my tongue but thought to myself We are a free republic and have a better standard of living than you do. Take your colony bullsh*t and cram it up your ass.
Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan are legends in the art. The sad reality that we now face is that the popularity of the ground and pound juice monkeys are seeing us lose the old ways and old traditions forever. That diminishes us.
You are however, absolutely correct in that chairman Mao was a bad guy. He was every much a devil as Hitler and Stalin were. The Communists suck at propaganda because history has shown they don't have anything we want. That's why they are so frantic with censorship. Preventing the truth from getting out.
DeleteWe saw what they did in East Berlin. We saw what they did in Stalin's death camps. We saw what they did at Tiananmen square. Were' not stupid. No lie can live forever.
My apologies. Looks like you are right in that the Communist government was indeed involved with the production of this movie which would explain why it is so historically inaccurate. I still think it's a good movie as long as we realize it is pure fantasy and is not historically accurate.
Delete