Even so, it was a scene no one wanted to do at the beginning. The first three days of shooting, with some 30 people on the ground unsuccessfully trying to make Mu Bai and Jen float, were a total disaster, and the results had to be abandoned.
Again, the Gobi Desert is the hottest and driest place on earth. But when Lee's team turned up to film, it rained non-stop, ruining their schedule. The locals put it down to the crew lighting incense every morning, a routine they undertook daily when on location. The Gobi people only burn incense when they need rain, they were told.
Fascinating, too, is the account of how Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊), a Malaysian, had to learn her part in Mandarin syllable by syllable, having no knowledge of the language when shooting began.
A writer based in Taiwan, Wang Hui-ling (王慧玲), is credited with transforming the script from that of a fast-paced narrative to something full of Chinese cultural resonances. Lee's fellow script writer James Schamus credits the film with faithfully spanning two worlds as a result of this input when he notes that "it is one of the truly delicious ironies of this movie that although I co-wrote it, I'll never fully understand all of its meanings." There are other things. There is, for instance, a concise history of the genre, and of Chinese martial arts in general, from David Bordwell, professor of film studies at the University of Wisconsin. But anyone remotely interested in the subject can easily find a great deal more elsewhere.
Lee appropriately has the last word, literally and in the sense of saying what matters most about his film. He reveals himself as fully aware of what he was doing, how he was enlarging a local style into something more universal. But he also is of no two minds about the movie's fundamental values.
Jen (Zhang Ziyi) represents the vigor and independence of youth, while Li and Yu (Chow and Yeoh) hide their love for each other almost until the end.
"Jen is the real hero," Lee writes. "Bound by the forces of society, Li and Yu never fully enjoyed the thrills and excitement of youth. They pay dearly for their status; regrets mount as their youth fades." It seems unlikely that Lee has finished with this topic for good. It will be interesting to see how he introduces it into his next movie, to be based on the comic strip story The Incredible Hulk.
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