Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
(Wo hu cang long)

Twenty-five years later, no one has forgotten how they held their breath — how they felt lifted into the air by the pirouettes, the bodies taking flight, the chases across rooftops and over water and through the bamboo canopies; by the at once huge and minute gestures of a foot, a wrist, or even a single finger; by the dance of swords, arrows, and bodies suddenly freed from gravity and yet weighed down by their vows (chivalric for some, rebellious for others), in an arena sketched out in binaries — day against night, inside against outside, the perfect stillness of the heroes against the untamed fury of the heroine, who is by turn Quixote, an insurgent, and a captive of the desert. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was all this — and still is, and will remain so for a long time. Aisha Rahim