Be Water

There is something about Bruce Lee that fascinates me . A combination of his looks , his screen presence and of course his martial arts has always interested me without being a massive martial arts fan myself. The man crossed boundaries and brought his art into the mainstream and this film highlights that.

Rejected by Hollywood, Bruce Lee returned to Hong Kong to complete four films. Charting his struggles in two worlds, Be Water explores questions of identity and representation through rare archive, intimate interviews, and his writings.

This isn't a fanboy film . Far from it . This is about how he was brought up in San Francisco and then moved back to Hong Kong and the way he didn't really fit in either place back in 60's . It's not a film about his films although the most influential are mentioned .

I learned a lot . I never knew he was a child actor in movies . I never new he was in The Green Hornet TV series in the U.S and most poignantly i never knew he died before Enter The Dragon was released.

I now know more about the great Bruce Lee because of Be Water and that has to be a good thing .

BRUCE LEE: BE WATER. Dir. Bao Nguyen. This Doc is part of ESPN's 30 For 30 series and a decent overview of the Actor/Martial Arts athlete. Nguyen tells the full story of Lee's journey from being born in San Francisco to growing up in Hong Kong (and becoming a child movie star) to returning to the U.S. in Seattle in the early 60s to moving to L.A. and working in Film & TV.

It's well trod territory as Lee, like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe before him, has had his famed life cut too short story told over and over. Nguyen has the advantage here of getting Lee's widow Linda Cadwell, Daughter Shannon Lee and Brother Jan-Fai Lee all to speak on the record in extensive interviews. The family also provided access to personal photos, videos, films and letters. Lee's life story is laid out well enough and others who intersected with the star during various points in his life including Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Producer Raymond Chow. The TV and Movie clips are well chosen (although ESPN's policy of stretching old 1:33 footage to fill the screen gets irksome at times). The downside to the access, is that Lee's life gets a bit sanitized. Only those who adored him are interviewed. Any intimations of Lee's womanizing and drug use is only obliquely alluded to with Lee himself being quoted as saying he was no "saint". The involvement of his family makes this somewhat understandable, but, can't help but make it a less than honest documentary. Nguyen does make up for it with his focus on Lee's struggle to be accepted as an American star rather than purely an "Asian" one - and one limited only to action roles. The context of Lee's time in the U.S. during the 60s and early 70s is nicely explored. Even today, the message resonates. The Doc also does an honorable job exploring the philosophy behind Lee's martial arts and explaining the title.

P.S. I worked on Rob Cohen's docu-drama DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY. I got to work with and meet Linda Cadwell and Shannon Lee, and I worked very closely with Lee's student and very fine Martial Arts instructor of his own, Jerry Poteet (it's unfortunate that he passed away and couldn't be interviewed for this Doc). I never met Bruce, of course, but having worked with Linda, Shannon and Jerry, I feel that this Documentary does respect to him, even if it's, understandably, biased towards him.

The best part of this documentary is that Bruce Lee is almost always on screen. We saw so little of him because of his early demise. 30 for 30 does it again with this gem. It is chronologically presented and very in-depth. Highly recommended.

Starts as a straightforward Bruce Lee documentary, pivots into being more broadly about Asian representation (and lack thereof) in Hollywood during its early years, and then shifts back into being more a Bruce Lee focused documentary in its final third.

All the content is compelling and interesting- it's really only the somewhat awkward shifting between these two main subjects that holding it back from being more than simply quite good.

But would still recommend as a solid documentary, even if you're like me and already thought you knew quite a lot about Bruce Lee- there was so much here that I didn't know, or hadn't really thought about before, a decent range of archive footage and old interviews to back that info up (an approach similar to another 2020 documentary I watched recently, also about an actor who passed away young: Belushi).

Bruce Lee was a very interesting man. Stood on principles when it would have been easier to fold under the stereotypes of Hollywood at that time.