Watching Yeoh in both films, particularly within the context of the awards season campaign she’s currently undergoing, is to see two bookends to the paradox that is her career. “Crouching Tiger” boasted great performances — Chow’s embodiment of stately elegance, a fire shimmering underneath; Zhang as the hotheaded protégé, unable to master the unruly greatness within her; Chang Chen, whose kooky charisma as Lo offered a version of Jack Sparrow years before Johnny Depp ever did — but it was Yeoh who shined the brightest. And yet, her current “Everything Everywhere” victory lap has correctly framed her as a revered global star who only now has been allowed to fully extend her limbs.
Uniquely, reverence is the issue — why couldn’t she ever be anything more than the dignified figure she tends to cut on film? Another way to ask that is, what would have happened if her performance in “Crouching Tiger” hadn’t inadvertently cast her in this unusual mold: refined, yet limited; regal, yet rigid; a graceful action star, but one that couldn’t be harried, human.
Lee’s film hinted that she could be all of it. For all of her sturdiness, her subtle, softened gaze throughout betrays her vulnerability. In the climax, as she watches her love die in her arms, her self-containment fractures. She weeps. She tells Jen to be true to herself, something she herself never could be.
Tragedy strikes like a one-two punch here. In the next scene, Jen returns to her own lover, Lo, a new life purportedly in her grasp. She asks him about the legend of the young man who jumped from a mountain to make a wish come true. Lo makes a wish that they’d return to the desert, and Jen leaps from the mountain. In the legend, the young man flies to safety. In Lee’s parable of the governor’s daughter, we don’t know for sure. Or do we?
Even some two decades later, the gender politics of the film hold up rather well, striking a tricky balance in telling the story of women who are bound, but not shown through the terms of subjugation — who get to fly even if they’re not truly free. Their reality is often told instead in glances, silent moments when they recognize the isolation and alienation of lives beyond their own control.
By the end, Jen’s fate has changed, but she is forever stuck. The film’s enduring power is perhaps most potent in its poetic final moment: Human flight now translated into tragedy, one of a life that cannot be — a timeless tale, Lee’s trademark. After she jumps from the mountain, Jen floats across the screen, her eyes closed, at peace. She’s finally free, swallowed by the abyss.
