The nobility of love - BY THE WAY by Max V. Soliven

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday, by a close eight-to-six vote, that there would be no special voter registration. That does it.

But everybody was looking the other way – at the 73rd Annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium where Hollywood’s glitterati gathered in that tribal rite for their usual orgy of self-congratulation. The British Broadcasting Corporation’s London-based anchor tried to slough off the year at issue as a lacklustre one for movie-making, not having produced something as cataclysmic as Titanic, only to be quickly rebutted by the BBC’s own reporters and analysts in Flicker Town who literally sang out it had been an "eclectic year" with many bright offerings.

And they’re right. No season which produced those two luminous and unforgettable motion pictures, Gladiator (Best Film) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Best Foreign Language Film) could ever be described as drab. They will be legends for many years to come.

I’m no film critic, nor do I have pretensions to any artsy-fartsy expertise, but one thing this writer is: A movie fan, from the popcorn and ice-drop days of kiddiehood to the DVD "home movie" era. There will be a great number of better-thought-out, trivia-studded, scintillating reviews written about that joyfest in L.A. in the days to come, decorated with dramatic color photographs at that, but this boyo here can’t wait to express his own summation, powered only by the gee-whiz, jiminy crickets adrenalin of a trans-Pacific film junkie (yes, Virginia, I remember Rogelio de la Rosa, FPJ in his cornier days, Gloria Romero, Pancho Magalona and Tita Duran, even Erap 40 pounds ago, and golden oldies like Palaris, Eskrimador, Ibong Adarna, and Anak Dalita).

My complaint about the telecast of the Oscars on RPN Channel 9 is, of course, the usual one. Too many repetitious ads crammed into the crevices between the cracks, which thereby rendered watching the show a feat of kilometric viewing. But that’s, I guess, what pays for the ride.

* * *

What the two movies which romped away with the most "Oscars" had in common was the theme of nobility – not just the nobility of courage and a fight for justice, but the nobility of love without selfishness. Except for one brief and implicit – rather than explicit sexual encounter – in the Taiwanese offering, Crouching Tiger . . . , there were no steamy scenes or ventures into nudity or carnality (save for the ho-hum depictions of gang-bang Roman orgies which merely hinted at the stereotype).

Yet, Gladiator, to take that factor, racked up more than $400 million at the box office, and Crouching Tiger . . . almost $100 million. Dreamworks is not Walt Disney, but it also demonstrated that what’s wholesome sells.

However, box office success is never considered in the judging of the Oscars, at least that’s what they say.

Russell Crowe, naturally, received the Best Actor award, for his role of a Roman warrior, devastated by inhuman cruelty and the perversity of the gods, his wife and son brutally tortured and murdered, while he himself is cut down, left for dead, but recovered by slavers and dragged into slavery. He fights his way back to Rome as a gladiator, challenges the Empire, and brings the evil Emperor down. Each scene is as colossal as the Colosseum. The magic of this epic – which we had despaired Hollywood was incapable of recreating again post-Charlton Heston and Cecil B. DeMille – is that it recaptures for the viewer the grandeur, the valor in battle, the vulgarity, and the hypocrisy of ancient Rome, while delivering the message: Remove the togas and wild beasts, the armor and the charging chariots, and you’ll have Wall Street and On The Waterfront combined with The Patriot. In the end, it is the tale of the hero – one man defying betrayal, being crushed by the Establishment, slugging it out against impossible odds, to win through. Sunt lacrymae rerum" the Roman epic poet Virgil once hymned how even the valiant and heroic cry in the Aeneid, yet press on to triumph buoyed onward and upward by their tears.

Russell Crowe’s triumph, too, was one of getting into the part of "General Maximus" in contradiction of his own rollicking, off-the-screen nature. Where the Roman hero is constant and true, Crowe in real (not reel) life is a chronic, crude womanizer, who got the ever-terrific Meg Ryan pregnant during the filming of Proof of Life, breaking up her marriage, then dumping her without a backward look. In his toga and sword, he’s as noble as Ben Hur. In mufti, he’s something else. But he can act. And, as Shakespeare remarked, ". . . the play’s the thing."

It was no surprise either that Julia Roberts finally won her Oscar as Best Actress. It was too long in coming (no pun intended, nor offended). She had been nominated twice in previous years without success – from the veiled look of apprehension on her face in the earlier part of the ceremony she feared she would, once again, be doomed to disappointment. But Erin Brokovich brought her home, so magnificently that when she ascended the stage to claim her award, she babbled charmingly and girlishly all over the place. Her busty and feisty portrayal of that famous feminine crusader against water pollution (I saw the actual Erin, and can conclude, ungraciously: No contest) brought her raves, plus thousands of women clamoring for the name of the super-miracle "bra" she was wearing. No carved and gilded prow of a Man o’ War breasted the waves more gloriously than Julia as "Erin." (I had to ungallantly squelch one determined lady who was pestering an entertainment writer for the label of that brassiere, by whispering: "That wasn’t the bra, it was Julia.") Her Oscar, indeed, had been deserved much earlier: for all those sugary but nice motion pictures which had touched the heart, from Pretty Woman to Notting Hill, and My Best Friend’s Wedding to Runaway Bride. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride – Ms. Roberts must have wailed. Now, she’s got it!

* * *

I can’t ladle enough praise on that superb movie with the impossible name, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to do it justice. With this fantastic motion picture, to parody Mao Zedong’s boast in 1949: The Chinese stand erect.

Just as Ridley Scott should have gotten the Oscar (it went to Steven Soderbergh) for Best Director, Taiwan-born Ang Lee deserved to share that laurel for his own opus. Crouching Tiger . . . in fact was a collaboration of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China, proof positive that Chinese film-making has come of age.

Michelle Yeoh was magnificent, as always, in this Mandarin masterpiece (she has been one of my favorite martial artists since she "divorced" her former husband, Harvey Knicks owner and playboy multimillionaire Dickson Poon with a kung fu chop after a long-suffering marriage). Chow Yun-Fat (who’s not fat, but charismatic to macho men and sexy to women) projected his usual manliness and strength, with the dignity of . . . well, a tiger crouching to spring. But the show was almost stolen by the young Zhang Ziyi, whose lovely features and grace befitting a gentle and well-bred maiden of an upper class clan belie her ability to explode into buoyant, almost unbelievable swordplay. Zhang Ziyi is lightning refusing to be tamed, wilful and confused, a young woman straining to burst out of the bonds of tradition and "arranged marriage" with the flick of a sword that turns to quicksilver and magic in her pearl-white hands.

The "fights" in this movie partake of Chinese legend and fairy-tales as well. The protagonists, heroes and heroines, villains and villainesses (is there such a word?) soar over rooftops and treetops with the ineffable grace of ballet dancers on the winged-feet of Mercury. The sword-fighters defy gravity, their movements defy logic. Swords, spears, cutting barbs, iron bars fly with dazzling speed, while the acrobatic somersaults of Zhang and Michelle, and the blurred sword swings and flashing movements of Chow leave audiences gasping with astonishment. If you miss this enchanting movie when it comes to Metro Manila’s screens, you’ll be doing yourself a terrible disservice.

When all is said and done, for all the martial magic and feats of flying, the crashing and the clanging, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a love story. It tells of love so great that it is unfulfilled. It sings of love rendered irresistible in its depth of feeling by being set aside by a prior need to pursue the path of honor. It is love at its purest – and its most frustrating. This is a story – two stories intertwined in fact – that enriches, ennobles, and uplifts the heart. You want to cheer. You want to weep.

It is the kind of tale in which one of its characters, expressing regret at having forgone love in a final, expiring breath, by that act makes it immortal.