Alarm reached fever pitch when TWC revealed that the American cut would only run 108 minutes, but fears were somewhat allayed when it was subsequently revealed that this new iteration of the film вЂ“ completed in partnership with Megan Ellison of Annapurna Pictures, whose other recent contributions to the cinema have been extraordinary вЂ“ was closely supervised by Wong Kar-Wai, himself, and featured вЂњadditional footageвЂќ that had not been included in either of the previous cuts.

Largely responsible for making foreign films palatable to American audiences in the 1990s, Weinstein has earned a reputation for drastically altering his acquisitions for their domestic release, and so Wong Kar-Wai fans had reason to be concerned when The Weinstein Company bought вЂњThe GrandmasterвЂќ at Berlin. Needless to say, thatвЂ™s a risk that Harvey Weinstein is willing to take. If a single wave is out of place вЂ“ if one character disappears for too long or one detail is made too clear вЂ“ his movies threaten to become sketches rather than slipstreams, and their magic is lost. From improbable romances to impossible affairs, from the cramped confines of a dingy Argentinian motel room to the cabin of a train that delivers the lonely souls of the future to a mysterious place of no return, WongвЂ™s films donвЂ™t progress in acts so much as they travel in orbits, drawing perfect circles around formative moments like a ship thatвЂ™s anchored in the middle of the sea. Indeed, the films of Wong Kar-Wai are as delicate as any of their characters, whose lives are often upended with a brief gesture, beautiful records that are doomed to repeat themselves as the result of a single scratch. вЂThe GrandmasterвЂ™ is trying to be all of those things at once, and itвЂ™s perhaps the вЂtryingвЂ™ thatвЂ™s tripping it upвЂќ. We want WongвЂ™s movies to be overwhelming but delicate supple but sturdy hypnotic but assured. In her ultimately positive appraisal of the Berlin cut, Stephanie Zacharek wrote that вЂњвЂThe GrandmasterвЂ™ can make you feel woozy, but not always in the best way.

Nevertheless, Wong decided to trim 15 minutes from the film in time for its glamorous international debut at FebruaryвЂ™s Berlin International Film Festival.

Reviews from the Chinese press were overwhelmingly (if not exclusively) positive, and the film performed extremely well at the box office, its domestic grosses alone ($50 million) enough to compensate for its production budget ($38.6 million). The cut with which Wong introduced the film to the world (henceforth referred to as вЂњThe Chinese CutвЂќ), clocked in at approximately 130 minutes, having already been whittled down from a rumored four-hour version. вЂњThe GrandmasterвЂќ, which chronicles the life and times of the legendary Ip Man (master of Wing Chun, mentor to Bruce Lee), debuted in China on January 6, 2013, merely hours after Wong had applied his вЂњfinal touchesвЂќ to the long-gestating project. Needless to say, itвЂ™s no surprise that his latest and most outwardly ambitious work вЂ“ a genuine historical epic five years in the making вЂ“ has emerged into the world with its ink still wet. The first time that the prodigiously talented Hong Kong auteur tried his hand at a film with wuxia elements, it took him nearly 14 years to arrive at a definitive cut (вЂњAshes of TimeвЂќ was completed in 1994, but the sands didnвЂ™t settle until 2008 when Wong produced the slightly shorter вЂњAshes of Time ReduxвЂќ). Perfectionist, tinkerer, victim of his opaque sui generis approach to cinematic storytelling вЂ“В however you slice it, when it comes to the difficulties of getting his vision onto movie screens intact, this isnвЂ™t Wong Kar-WaiвЂ™s first rodeo. 'Kung fu: two words вЂ“ one horizontal, one vertical.'

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