Film Name:猛龍過江 / The Way of the Dragon / Fury of the Dragon / Return of the Dragon / Revenge of the Dragon
《The Way of the Dragon》 has the usual elements of a Bruce Lee film, the young kung-fu fighting man from the countryside who travels to a new, more affluent area. In this film, the protagonist, Tang Lung, arrives in a foreign country, Rome. In the beginning of the film, a foreign woman keeps staring at Tang Lung with contempt, which can reflect the social environment of Hong Kong at that time, where people were still looked down upon by foreigners, and probably had an inferiority complex.
Tang Lung comes to Rome at the invitation of the uncle of Miss Chan Ching Wah, who runs a restaurant, to help her take care of the local hooligans. When she first meets the young man from the countryside, she feels helpless, thinking that he is of no help at all, and that the Chinese staff in the restaurant, all of whom practise karate and other foreign martial arts, are also disdainful of Chinese kung fu. But soon, when Tang Long easily defeats a foreign gangster who comes to the restaurant to collect protection money, the crowd adores him.
This is a familiar plot, as seen in 《Fist of Fury》 and 《The Big Boss》, where a young man is belittled and through kung fu, he is able to make himself respected by the crowd. This signifies the inner maturity of the protagonist, whose confidence in martial arts is reflected by the admiration of the crowd. Meanwhile, the scene in 《The Way of the Dragon》 where Tang Lung meets a foreign prostitute will also make the audience smile. In 《The Big Boss》, the protagonist also meets a naked foreign prostitute. As martial arts practitioners usually repress and avoid sex, this episode in the film, in which the naked woman representing sexual desire is confronted directly, can also reflect the inclusiveness of Bruce Lee’s martial arts ideology and his advocacy of not avoiding, but channeling one’s own power and its desires, as he put it, “the glass of water is empty in order to fill it up again”.
The best part of the film, and the most rich in Bruce Lee’s martial arts ideas, is the scene at the end of the film where Tang Lung fights a karate master in the Colosseum in Rome. The panoramic shot of the Colosseum is symmetrical, fixed, and metaphorical – the Colosseum, a place where people fought wild beasts with their lives, and where the fight between these two men was bound to be very intense. At the same time, this is already a dilapidated ruins of the Colosseum, in which the two men are silently confronting each other, and the dilapidation contrasts with the will of the two men, which is extremely tense. There are cats shrugging their shoulders above the walls, and the next shot shows a similar warm-up by Tang Lung, who has taken off his coat and is moving his muscles to a staggering degree. Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do favours the weak over the strong, choosing to nimbly dodge, rear up and cut off his opponents in the face of far stronger opponents. Karate is extremely rigid, and Tang Lung is initially at a disadvantage. However, water is the hardest substance in the world, so Tang Long adopts the strategy of “water”, he starts to jump and strike his opponent flexibly, not to fight with him. The opponent loses and loses his life, in keeping with the metaphor of the Colosseum. In the end, Tang Lung cloaks his opponent’s body – a form of mourning and respect that represents Chinese Confucianism.
The fighting sequences that Bruce Lee presents in the film are, I think, highly instinctive. All of his jumping, attacking, retracting, and defending, have amazing action appeal. His movements and body are highly energetic and referential, while those specific moves constitute referents. These moves will be immortalised in the memory of the viewer because in the process of watching the film, the viewer has projected his instinctive desires – violence, sex – onto the absolute strongman in this film. People will unconsciously recall the actions that can release their desires when their instincts are suppressed, and recall Tang Lung’s naked, extremely powerful muscles. His movements are said to reach the limits of the human body, and his image becomes a symbol that allows Chinese viewers to gain instinctive satisfaction and self-confidence while watching the film. The process of watching the film is similar to hypnosis, or rather, the state of ecstasy that the producers of this type of film expect from the audience. However, its martial arts ideology is highly transcendental in nature, requiring the martial artist to imitate water, have no desires, dissolve attacks, and respect the weak. These concepts in turn pull the viewers back from the fantasy of pure violence, and in the end, they release their instincts, and at the same time, they gain satisfaction in their spiritual and moral demands. Perhaps this is the fascination of Bruce Lee’s screen symbols.
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