I have to make a confession: I had never seen an Ip Man movie despite its enormous positive reaction among my peers. Due to the national-wide stay-at-home measures, I had the chance to finally catch this marital arts flick on Netflix.
Taking place before and during the Second Sino-Japanese war, the movie follows the life of Ip Man, a Wing Chun (a form of martial arts) master. After cementing his reputation as the best in the city of Foshan, the Japanese occupiers challenged him to a martial arts tournament. This was to show that Japanese arts were superior to the Chinese ones, and therefore the Japanese people was superior to the Chinese people.
While it was an excellent martial arts flick with fast-paced action and fantastic stunts, I would like to explore whether the historical sequences were genuine.
What was accurate:
1) The tough life of being the occupied
Territories occupied under Imperial Japanese often suffered from lack of food and a crashed economy. The film was accurate in showing that even the rich had to pawn off their valuable just to get enough food.
The film was also good in showing that the many of the occupied people still had to choose between working for their new masters, or starving to death. Even the simple job of interpretation was portrayed as treason by Ip Man initially. However the script had the decency to show that the interpreter had to do so in order to feed his family.
2) The cruelty of the Imperial Japanese
The Imperial Japanese Army was known for their cruelty. The film portrays them as wantonly executing civilians in the streets at one point. The film also showed Japanese officers beating their subordinates who are unable to fulfill their requests.
What was inaccurate
1) The martial arts tournament
Although the film showed that the Japanese held martial arts tournament to challenge their Chinese subjects or prisoners, I could find no research detailing any of such in Japanese-occupied territories. Instead, I surprising discovered that the reverse was true.
Chang Dongsheng, a Chinese martial artist during the Second World War, would challenge Japanese prisoners during the war. He would visit the prisons to identify Japanese martial artists among the captives and challenge them to a fight.
2) Ip Man's actions during the war
While Ip Man shown to inspire the people of Foshan to rise up against the Japanese, he actually left the city during the war. He only returned to Foshan after the war to resume his duties as a police officer.
Furthermore, he did not flee for Hong Kong because of the Imperial Japanese. Ip Man and his family left because the communists won the Chinese Civil War. (Ip Man was an officer for the Chinese Nationalists, the opponents of the communists.)
Conclusion
I enjoyed Ip Man as a martial arts flick set in the backdrop of the World War 2.
Comments