Thursday, February 22, 2007

"I put my beliefs into this film.... Everything."


Tonight Hubby and I were finally able to see the last Jet Li wushu film - Fearless because of a late Christmas present to Hubby.
I am not sure what I expected in seeing this film. What I received was a gift of great quality. The fight scenes were spectacular and, according to the bonus features, they were real. They had to be in order to keep the movie as authentic as possible. "Real" is a relative term, I understand, when discussing movies, after all, they are just pretend, but when it comes to true martial arts movies the actors/fighters end up taking a lot of punishment by taking many of the blows. The weapons were real, and quite sharp in Fearless. He used people who had been studying martial arts and weapons forms for years and they went through everything very carefully so no one would get killed because of a stupid mistake. It was pretty real after all.
Jet Li said in an interview section of the DVD we have that he put everything that was "Jet Li" into this film because this was his philosophy about martial arts, about life and it was pretty much like his journey. He said he had been training in fighting all of his life and he finally understood his own worst enemy was himself. He had to be better, do better each day. "I try to do better than yesterday today, and tomorrow I try to do better than today," he said at one point.
And his philosophy of martial arts? That "you can beat up a person's body, but you aren't going to change their heart." Martial arts is there to improve your body, mind, and spirit. So, the better fighter you are should make you a better peacemaker, because you know what all can happen, and how horrible some of the results can be.
This, indeed, was a wonderful movie to view, and I plan on seeing it again just to relish the scenes, music, and the words in self-discovery the main character goes through.
If you haven't seen it. See it. You won't be disappointed.

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