It begins with a plaintive cello solo, followed by a crashing of drums: Serene melancholy yields to pulse-quickening excitement. Right from the start, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" is built on a series of tensions that director Ang Lee is in no hurry to resolve. He eases us into a lost world — a Chinese village, sometime during the Qing dynasty — where two highly skilled fighters and longtime allies, Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-fat) and Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh), are about to have a long-overdue reunion. They have some important business concerning a trip to Beijing, a deadly sword and Mu Bai's impending retirement, but their cautious body language tells a more personal story.
And Lee, to his credit, gives them the time and space to tell it. In every soft-edged gaze and wistful smile that passes between Mu Bai and Shu Lien, we can read years of unfulfilled, unarticulated longing. "So what will you do now?" she asks. His answer — he has a grave to visit and a score to settle — feels like both an honest one and a deflection. The lack of hurry is crucial, not only to the story's distinctive flow and rhythm but also to its meaning. For this is a movie about, among other things, the mysterious inflections and operations of time: It's about how a furiously kinetic fight scene can make the world stand still, and how years of silent suffering can pass by in an instant.
A lot of time has passed since "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" first stormed festivals, theaters and the gates of Hollywood itself in 2000. Returning to the big screen this weekend in a digital 4K restoration, the movie has lost none of its dreamy beauty or hypnotic power, and that power still builds as assuredly and methodically as ever.
