TIFF Review: REAL SHAOLIN

Posted by Todd Brown at 4:01pm.

Posted in Film & DVD Reviews , Documentary, Martial Arts, USA & Canada, Toronto Film Festival 2008.

Shaolin. If you have even a passing knowledge of Chinese culture the name instantly conjures up a stream of powerful images. The Shaolin Temple is believed to be the historical source not only of Chinese Kung Fu but also of Zen Budhism. It has been the center of legends, home to icons, immortalized and film. And though it was burned to the ground in the 1920s and the original Shaolin kung fu largely banned by Mao Tse Tung - the disciplines have since essentially split into wushu and sanda - it is still there, still active and still inspiring pilgrims from around the globe to make their way there hoping to learn the wisdom of ancient masters.

Enter film maker Alexander Lee. Himself a one time pilgrim to the Shaolin Temple, Lee returned after his own sojourn there armed with his camera and the desire to capture the Shaolin experience from a variety of perspectives. He has succeeded admirably.

Lee’s film, Real Shaolin, tracks a quartet of students from various backgrounds, studying at four different schools in four slightly different disciplines at the temple itself and martial arts schools in the nearby city of Dengfeng. Representing the Chinese experience of Shaolin are Yuan Peng and Zhu. Yuan is a ten year old orphan abandoned at the temple and adopted by one of the Shaolin masters. Yuan is being prepared for life as a Shaolin Warrior Monk, his entire life built around his training, training the shifts to Qigong Iron Body techniques when renovations to the Shaolin Temple force him to move out for a time. Zhu? Zhu is a nineteen year old boy, the child of poor farmers training in sanda - a competitive martial arts sport that combines kung fu techniques with take down maneouvers - in the largest martial arts school in the world, a school with over fourteen thousand students at any given time. Zhu dreams of being crowned the Sanda King, failing that he relies on his sanda training opening up a future career for him as a police officer, bodyguard or the like.

But the Shaolin Temple draws students from all around the globe and Lee observes a pair of westerners as well. There is Eric, a twenty nine year old Frenchman - ancient by martial arts standards - come to study under Shaolin Master Shi De Yang under incredibly harsh conditions. And from America there is Orion, a nineteen year old studying wushu under much more affluent conditions with the help of a dedicated trainer.

Real Shaolin is fascinating on a number of levels. It is, first of all, an inside look at a hidden world, a look at the reality of a world shrouded in myth and legend. It is a harsh, difficult life, a life that places intense demands on those who choose to follow it. We follow the students as they train, as they compete, as the push themselves to their limits to achieve their absolute best. And on another level there is also a rich human drama unfolding. We watch both Orion and Zhu struggle to work through injuries. Eric slowly comes to terms with the fact that he’s not going to find what he’s looking for at the school where he has already invested two years of his life. Yuan must adjust to a move from the close confines and rigid structure of the temple to the more chaotic countryside life forced upon him by the temple renovations. All question their path in life, all reach a crisis point, and all much look inside themselves to learn what they’re really made of.

Real Shaolin is very much a typical, talking heads sort of documentary. The camera work is solid but not outstanding, the format nothing you haven’t seen many times before. But the film excels because of it’s handling of its rich material. For martial arts fans the appeal is obvious but whether you know or care about this world or not it remains a fascinating view, a study of clashing cultures and the human spirit.