Iron & Silk

Based on Ivy Leaguer Mark Salzman's experiences in China in 1982-84, Shirley Sun (A Great Wall) and crew have managed to create not so much another martial arts fistfest as they have an entirely new genre hybrid: sort of an East-West martial arts romantic travelogue cum culture clash, if you will. Sure, it sounds bizarre, but it works beautifully. Salzman, playing himself, arrives in China to teach English to a group of weary-looking adults who have been forced by the state to cease teaching Russian and take up English instead. When one of his students hears how much Mark enjoys martial arts, he takes him to meet Teacher Pan (Quingfu, playing himself), a venerable teacher in the art of Wushu. Naturally, Mark also finds himself falling in love with Ming, a young woman in love with Western writing and culture. All the traditional bases are covered in this way, but director Sun ably steers clear of any of the pitfalls you might expect in a film like this. Never really a “martial arts” movie, Iron & Silk is instead more of a character study contrasting Mark's Western-taught knowledge of the East and China's reaction to him. This is, of course, set post-Cultural Revolution and pre-Tiananmen Square, so there's no real physical danger in Mark's situation as the new guy in town. Rather, Sun bounces Mark's confusion toward his seemingly incomprehensible hosts against the Chinese's rigid belief system, manners, and politics. In this way, Sun's film gives us an interesting glimpse into early-Eighties China, and what it was like to live there during that relatively peaceful time. A nice place to visit (and learn Wushu, no doubt), but I wouldn't want to live there.