On July 20, 1973, Hong Kong was shocked by the news of the death of Bruce Lee, a martial artist and actor who, in just a few years of his career, managed to gain the status of a legend of Chinese and American cinema. Lee’s filmography (only leading roles) includes only five full-length films, the last of which, Enter the Dragon, was released posthumously. The legacy of the great hero of martial arts and cinema is usually attributed not only to the skyrocketing popularity of Hong Kong action films or the thirst of boys all over the planet to practice kung fu, but also to such a unique phenomenon as brusplotation.
“Bruce Lee: Enter the Clones” by David Gregory is the first documentary film that tries to understand the reasons for the rabid copying of the image of Bruce Lee in Asian cinema of the mid-70s. Under the watchful eye of the director, the Bruceplotting is dissected, and the main characters of the era shed light on the peculiarities of the production of films of a dubious subgenre and talk a little about how the fate of Lee’s doubles developed after the studio machine passed their lives through the capitalist conveyor belt.
Gregory’s film is not original. This is an hour and a half of a completely traditional documentary narrative: interviews with actors, directors and producers are replaced by excerpts from films with Lee and his clones, archival footage of the legendary Hong Kong studio Golden Harvest and a moderate set of simple graphics. You shouldn’t expect any Netflix-style dramatic somersaults or non-judgmental fixation of reality characteristic of a modern doc. “Enter the Clones” is interesting primarily in its content, and the deeper you dive into the work of David Gregory, the more noticeable the scale of the phenomenon under study becomes.
Still from the documentary “Bruce Lee: Enter the Clones”
During his short career, Bruce Lee influenced a colossal number of people and processes. Hong Kong cinema, for example, thanks to the actor, acquired a cult status that lasted until the end of the 90s. People all over the world discovered the martial arts films that Golden Harvest and Shaw Studios made literally on their knees in record time. And Western viewers (as well as film producers) saw the Chinese not only in the role of the third assistant to a minor hero. The sudden death of Bruce Lee was a disaster not only for his family and fans, but also for the already booming commercial machine.
Bruceplotation arose instantly and organically. In Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and even Thailand, hundreds of boys, inspired by Bruce Lee during his lifetime, began to study kung fu. And the studio bosses needed actors who looked like the legend, because the audience was not ready to put up with the death of their idol. This is how Bruce Le, Bruce Lai, Dragon Lee, Bruce Ty, Lee Bruce, Brutus Lee and dozens of other imitators appeared. The production of budget action films with cheap copies of Lee has reached an unimaginable scale: according to various sources, there are from 80 to 200 “films with Bruce Lee,” but no one can name the exact number.
At the same time, the actors themselves did not receive even a tenth of what the studios earned with their help, although they often worked on several films at once per day. In pursuit of profit, businessmen stopped at nothing: they used re-edits of old Bruce Lee films, manipulative subtitles on posters, and even real footage from the actor’s funeral. David Gregory carefully collects all the evidence of the unbridled studio bigwigs and, with the help of experts and actors, ironically states that after Lee’s death the world went crazy for several years.
Still from the documentary “Bruce Lee: Enter the Clones”
“Enter the Clones” is filled with sadness. Like any cultural phenomenon of this level, Bruceplot quickly descended into farce and madness (the final point was the film where Lee climbs out of the grave and fights Superman), and then postmodernism came into play, they laughed at the Bruce Lee clones, the topic was deconstructed and abandoned on the mezzanine film history. New idols have appeared in Hong Kong cinema. Numerous duplicates of the actor were out of work and scattered in all directions, which is what Gregory devotes a lot of time to in the film. The pseudo-Bruces share sad stories of failed acting careers: some went into business, others became osteopaths, but everyone recalls the past with the same mixture of frustration and resentment.
Thus, “Bruce Lee: Enter the Clones” becomes not only an educational documentary about a specific local phenomenon, but also a story about the flow of time and the role of a specific person in this flow. David Gregory takes a comprehensive approach to one of the most important aspects of Bruce Lee’s legacy and shows viewers how the figure of an actor, elevated to a cult, can shape entire subgenres and influence the fate of the industry and thousands of people. And, of course, destroy lives.
The film “Bruce Lee: Enter the Clones” will be shown at the Moscow International Film Festival as part of the “Wild Nights” program
Text:
Vladimir Rostovsky
Tags: MIFF Path Thousand Lees review documentary film Bruce Lee Enter Clones
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