Ip Man 4 (5 Stars)

I watched this film in December while I was in England. I couldn't resist going to see it again now that it's been released in Germany, even though I knew it would be dubbed into German. I'm glad that I went today. I voted it the third best film of 2019, and after seeing it again I'm wondering whether it should have been higher in the list.

The atmosphere in the cinema was overwhelming. The theatre was more than half full. There was spontaneous applause and cheering whenever Donnie Yen won a fight. At the end of the film, when the final credits rolled, everyone was applauding. With the exception of films at the Fantasy Film Festival, I've never seen that happen in a German cinema. Germans are so reserved. Usually. It takes an exceptional film to get them out of their shell.

I usually praise German dubbing, but today it was done inconsistently. To explain: the film begins in China. Everyone is talking Chinese (probably Cantonese), but a visitor arrives from America, so there's some English dialogue. After this Ip Man goes to America, so all the dialogue is in English, except for phone calls that he makes to Hong Kong.

Now, in the opening scenes the Chinese dialogue is dubbed into German, while the English dialogue is left in English, with German subtitles. Okay. That's a convenient way to do it. But when Ip Man is in America the English dialogue is dubbed into German. That's not logical. And then the international phone calls in Chinese are also dubbed into German. I expect that the mixture of dubbing and non-dubbing was a deliberate decision, but I don't like it. The version I saw in England was better: the original languages throughout, no dubbing, and subtitles for the Chinese dialogue.

The film is a masterpiece. (Yes, I know I overuse that word). There's less fighting than in the other films, the second film especially, but there's a lot of emotional material. An important part of the plot – so important that I don't want to call it a sub-plot – is the healing of the broken relationships of the two Masters with their children: Ip Man with his son Ching, Wan Zong-hua with his daughter Yonah.

The Ip Man films aren't biopics in a strict sense. They're a mixture of truth and fiction. To sum up the films:

"Ip Man" is mostly true, with a few fictional elements.

"Ip Man 2" is half true, half fictional.

"Ip Man 3" is mostly fictional, with a few true elements.

"Ip Man 4" is half true, half fictional.

I need to go back and watch the first three films. Maybe not all at once. I want to spread them out until the fourth part is released on Blu-ray.