What Remains in the Ashes of Time? Nation, Love, and Martial Arts in Wong Kar-wai’s "The Grandmaster"

Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmaster (2013), a martial arts epic inspired by the life of the legendary kung-fu master Ip Man, is the commercially most successful film of Wong’s directorial career. The Grandmaster is a historical drama set against the turbulent history of China from the 1930s to the 1950s. In her talk Prof. Zhu explores how this film engages with issues of history and nationalism differently than other martial arts films, particularly the popular Ip Man series. She examines the recurring themes of love, longing, and loss – sentiments prominently featured in The Grandmaster and in Wong’s other films that demonstrate the director’s special interests in time and its cinematic representation. Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmaster can be seen as a melancholic interrogation of the temporal experience in human existence, asking: What remains in the ashes of time?

Yanhong Zhu is Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at Washington and Lee University. Her research interests include literary theory, film theory and criticism, modern Chinese literature, and Chinese cinema. She is currently working on a book manuscript, “Chinese Cinema and the Historical Event,” which looks at specific events in modern Chinese history and the ways in which these events are taken up and represented in Chinese cinema.

Presented by the UO Confucius Institute for Global China Studies and cosponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, the CAPS Jeremiah Speaker Fund, the Chinese Flagship Program and the Asian Studies Program.