‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ at 20: Ang Lee on the game-changing martial arts film

Michelle Yeoh (left) and Zhang Ziyi star in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Photo: Handout

It’s physically impossible to get to the forest fight scene that hovers atop slender bamboo trees in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and not say out loud “Whoa”.

Twenty years later, the exhilarating grace of Ang Lee’s martial-arts masterwork is just as breathtaking. The way figures glide across the water. The extraordinary lightness of it. Its craft and choreography are only further evidence of a mantra uttered in the film: “A sword by itself rules nothing. It only comes alive in skilled hands.”