Ip Man is back, along with everything Chinese viewers expect to see on the big screen---a large dose of dazzling Wing-Chun-styled action, a moral lesson on martial arts, and above all, plenty of nationalist aspiration remains.
Ip Man 2 follows Ip's life after he moves to Hong Kong from Guangdong's Fo Shan in 1950. But the switch of time and place by no means varies the format of the 2009 movie. Every dialogue and plot twist still serves no purpose except to provoke a fight and finally lead to a good beating up of foreign hecklers. But instead of confronting Japanese militarist ambitions, in Ip Man 2 the grandmaster sets out to challenge British colonists.
A more noticeable change in the latest installment is that winning the fight is not as easy as in the first movie and it takes Ip Man a few more punches to beat down his rival.
When the indestructible grandmaster triumphs over the opponent, my coming-out-of-nowhere hatred was somehow vented and at the same time I was also thrilled by a lasting round of applause by the excited Chinese audience, something you rarely see in a Chinese cinema. Everybody around was so into it that I suddenly realized a movie packed with nationalism could easily become mega-powerful and even a bit intimidating.
Even if I'm too humble to personally speak for the 1.3 billion Chinese in our country, it's fair to say after years of poverty and inferiority in contemparory history our sense of national dignity is in some ways still on shaky ground and so sometimes it's as well to have it reinforced by enchanting ourselves with a rather chauvinistic story like this one.
It seems there is never a lack of directors and scripts in China that intentionally touch upon people's fragile national pride and self-esteem, either to impair it (as in Lu Chuna's Nanking!Nanking!) or more likely to inflate it (as in the Ip Man movies).
For some quick fun and elusive conceit, we boldly fake the story, skillfully stereotype the foreign challengers, purposely magnify our kung fu masters and wishfully stand on moral excellence. In Ip Man 2, the British actors really overdo the acting to the extent that they become symbols for disgrace and notoriety itself, so as to highlight our righteousness. It looks justified at first glance but hardly bears close examination.
If that's what makes a proud nation, I'd rather live a more modest life.
On a scale of 1 to 10, I give Ip Man 2 a patriotic yet ambivalent SEVEN.
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