Ang Lee
Facts
李安 (Lǐ Ān) was born in Pintung, Taiwan (see Quote 3 to find out a little bit more about his life there.) on October 23, 1954. He graduated in 1975 from The National Taian College of Arts. After that he went to the States and got a degree at Univerity of Illinois in Theater Direction. Later he recieved a Masters at New York University in Film Production. On August 19, 1983 Lee married Jane Lin. Their two sons are named Haan and Mason. They were both born in Illinois.
The lead actor in the Wedding Banquet, Winston Chao, was an airline steward and model before he was casted to play the part. He had no acting history so he worked with Lee and others everyday for three to four hours. He went on to be in Eat Drink Man Women. Lee said concerning Chao in The Wedding Banquet: “It's hard to find a good actor who is charming, speaks English and Mandarin Chinese, and doesn't mind portraying a gay character” (IMDb: Ang Lee).
Filmography
1992 Pushing Hands
1993 The Wedding Banquet
1994 Eat Drink Man Woman
1995 Sense and Sensibility
1997 The Ice Storm
1999 Ride with the Devil
2000 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
2001 Chosen (short)
2003 Hulk
2005 Brokeback Mountain
2007 Lust, Caution
2009 Taking Woodstock
2012 Life of Pi (post-production)
(IMDb; Ang Lee)
Awards
Lee has received and been nominated for many awards but I find the things that making him unique are:
"Is one of only seven living directors who have won the Directors Guild of America Award more than once. The others are Steven Spielberg (3 times) and two-time winners Clint Eastwood, Ron Howard, Francis Coppola, Oliver Stone and Milos Forman. However, Lee is unique in this group and being the only one not to have directed a best picture Oscar winner."
"Is one of 7 directors to win the Golden Globe, Director's Guild, BAFTA, and Oscar for the same movie, winning for Brokeback Mountain (2005). The other directors to achieve this are Mike Nichols for The Graduate (1967), 'Milos Forman' for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975),Richard Attenborough for Gandhi (1982), Oliver Stone for Platoon (1986), Steven Spielberg for Schindler's List (1993), and Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire (2008)."
"The only recipient of the Academy Award for Best Director who is not Caucasian, i.e. American or European."
(IMDb; Ang Lee)
Trademarks
Ang Lee trademarks are interesting for me to look at. One thing that he does is he works with two people very often in his movies. An actor that he used many times was Sihung Lung. He was in most of Lee’s Chinese movies (Pushing Hands; The Wedding Banquet; Eat Drink Man Woman; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and I think would have continued to be in them had he not passed away on May 2, 2002. (IMDb; Sihung Lung) Lung played the a fatherly roll in these movies. Crouching Tiger is the one that he isn’t a direct father for anyone but acts like a father for Yu Shu Lien when she comes to stay with him when she takes the sword to him. Lee’s first three movies are described as by “Ang [Lee] calls it his ‘Father Knows Best’ trilogy, and it really is a trilogy,” said James Schamus. James is chief executive of Focus Features (Rother). Schamus is the other person who Lee works with a lot. In fact Schamus helped produce or write almost all of his movies (IMDb; Schamus).
“The figure of the father, even the flawed or absent father, is one of his most trenchant themes and is present, along with generational conflict, in all of his work.” said Whitney Crothers Dilley, professor in Taiwan at Shih Hsin University teaches literature and film studies and wrote a book about Lee (Rother). This is really interesting when you find out him because it is really well known for him to be kind of a rebel and a wild person. It makes me think of why he does it? It seems to me that he does things very thought out and has a kind of deeper meaning to things.
These deeper meaning things are sometimes the hard things that he takes on to describe in his movies a few examples are war, love and fitting in socially. Two of his more well known movies Sense and Sensibility and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon are about women who are restricted in their society and how they handle it. These repressed women show their strengths and how others can do the same. The repressed people it seems like is who he focuses to portray. Lee has said, “I realized I’m very interested in, and identify with, the losing side” (Rother).
Thoughts
I starting watching Ang Lee movies for the same reason I started with Chinese movies and that is for the martial arts. This is essentially what caught my eye and dragged me in at first. It didn’t take much before I realized that there was so much more to them. They were art in their expressions, colors, angles, filming techniques and so much more. The funny thing is that it was like adding fuel to the fire because the more I realized and learned about all the other aspects the more I became entrenched in Chinese movies. This goes the same for Lee’s movies I started with one and have now working on finish watching all of them.
One of the reasons why I like the movies that he does is that he picks difficult subjects and has lots of meanings in his films. He chooses to depict reality and how it really is instead of just giving some of the details. This type of meticulous directing is something I really enjoy. Lee, when talking about leaving out difficult parts said, “I'd be even more wrong to ignore reality and to lose that edge” (Mottram). A few examples of this are: Crouching Tiger has love and violence/war; The Wedding Banquet has gay/love, cross cultures, and family/traditions; Lust, Caution has war/patriotism/violence and love.
It seems like love and family are in every movie that he does (see Quote 7). I feel from all the articles and interviews that I have read is that he has a really good grasp on that concept and tries to show it in a more understanding way for us.
He also chooses to do it his way. A good example of this is: “Crouching Tiger flopped at China’s main movie house in Beijing while Shanghai audiences hissed at the famous bamboo fight scene. [Lee] tried to combine both Eastern and Western concepts in Crouching Tiger to fuse a Bruce Lee film with the style of one of the director’s earlier art-house hits Sense and Sensibility” (Berry). He picked to do it this way and it didn’t matter what others thought or did because he was showing it the way it should be. Another good example of this hardship is: “Chinese state media also cut the part of his acceptance speech where he thanked, in Chinese, "everyone" in Taiwan, China and Hong Kong” (Coonan).
I have come to really admire Ang Lee for many things. I also feel like he can describe himself best so i try and let him do that. One area that Lee really excels at is yet is still humble in is story telling (see Quote 1). He does this through change, Quotes 2-4 describe this better than I could. The last thing that really makes him so great is that he is always trying to learn more (see Quote 6).
Quotes
- "I'm experienced enough to know that the hardest thing to tell is an epic short story; slices of life that add up to an epic feeling."
- "I don't know where I am, but I never know where I am. I was born in China, then my parents moved to Taiwan, where we were outsiders, then to the States, then back to China, then back here. I trust the elusive world created by movies more than anything else. I live on the other side of the screen."
- "My father's family were liquidated during the Cultural Revolution in China because they were landowners. He was the only one to escape. I was born and brought up in Taiwan. But you absorb the trauma. My parents had no sense of security. It was as if the world could turn against them at any moment."
- "Nothing stands still. That's important in my movies. People want to believe in something, want to hang on to something to get security and want to trust each other. But things change. Given enough time, nothing stands still. I think seeking for security and lack of security is another thing in my movies."
- "Every movie I make. That's my hideout, the place I don't quite understand, but feel most at home."
- "I think I find something new in each culture after being away for a bit, and that's creatively important. You can't move forward without changing, and that's why I try to stay open to new perspectives. I want to keep learning. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that you can never learn enough."
- "I was never romantic in real life. That is why I have to make movies about it"
(IMDb; Ang Lee)
References
"Ang Lee." IMDb. IMDb.com. Web. 1 March. 2012. <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000487/>.
"James Schamus." IMDb. IMDb.com. Web. 1 March. 2012. <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0770005/>.
"Sihung Lung." IMDb. IMDb.com. Web. 1 March. 2012. <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0485950/>.
Rother, Larry. “Chasing Society’s Hidden Dragons.” New York Times. New York Times, 31 July 2009. Web. 1 March 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/movies/01lee.html>.
Mottram, James. “Beyond the Mild Side.” The Independent. The Independent, 30 Oct. 2009. Web. 1 March 2012. <http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/ang-lee--beyond-the-mild-side-1811465.html>.
Coonan, Clifford. “Beijing’s bid for cool: Ang Lee’s Olympic Rapprochement.” The Independent. The Independent, 18 Oct. 2006. Web. 1 March 2012. <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/beijings-bid-for-cool-ang-lees-olympic-rapprochement-420525.html>.
Berry, Chris and Mary Farquhar. China on Screen: Cinema and Nation. New York Columbia University Press, 2006. 47, 69-74. Print
Jacob Glazier 23:25, 3 March 2012 (UTC)