The Real Shaolin

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Audience Member "The Real Shaolin" follows the paths of four people who only seem to be able to give meaning to their lives by pursuing excellence in "Shaolin kung fu". Two of them are Westerners: an American with a solid grounding in martial arts who was able to pay for one-on-one classes, and a naive Frenchman, who came seeking the traditional teachings of one Master De Yang, and ends up studying modern wushu with second-rate instructors in a dilapidated school. The other two are Chinese: a teenager who trains in the brutal full-contact Sanda sport, and a young, destitute orphan, who is taught to believe that qigong and Shaolin kung fu will make him a superman. "The Real Shaolin" will be of interest to anyone who has seen Chinese martial arts depicted on screen, and is curious about the reality behind the myths. On a pratical level, you will see what kinds of food, sleeping arrangements and training conditions and schedule you get in Shaolin, and what kinds of prospects you have in such an environment. My impression was that the whole place was a heartless machine where students are treated inhumanely, a dog-eat-dog world of false promises, where bodies are often pushed to breaking point, a darwinian world of survival of the fittest where nineteen is already too old. For those seeking Buddhist enlightenment, genuine monks seem few and far between, and heads are probably shaven more often for marketing reasons than spiritual ones. People go to Shaolin with visions of serene monasteries lost in the clouds, and what they get is noisy roads with cars puffing out black smoke so foul it makes them cough. Whatever is "traditional" in Shaolin has probably been recreated rather than transmitted, just like the rebuilding of some parts of the Temple based on pre-1928 photographs. The Communist revolution has laminated the ancestral heritage, and left in its stead the athletic discipline of wushu, and the gladiatorial games of Sanda, both of them extremely competitive and materialistic. But "The Real Shaolin" is not only a film for kung fu buffs. It is also a rather depressing lesson about our dreams, how the movie industry manufactures them, and how reality crushes them, be they the poor man's dreams of the Chinese or the rich man's dreams of Westerners. It is also a vision of the pitilessness of a system where young people are exploited and abused, whether they came by choice or by necessity. It is the moving story of four people with very different backgrounds and very similar aspirations, who learn quite a few hard lessons about life. The film is no cheap, amateurish documentary either. The original music is by Shigeru Umebayashi, the famous composer of Yumeji's Theme from "In the Mood for Love" and other soundtracks for Asian blockbusters. On a similar theme, I should soon be watching Empty Mind Films' "A Boy in China." Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/20/23 Full Review Read all reviews

The Real Shaolin

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