Past, Present and Future with Oscar Winner Ang Lee
At 51, director Ang Lee’s film career has come full circle. After winning the Academy Award for best foreign language film for 2001’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” his “Brokeback Mountain” garnered the best director, screenplay and music awards at last year’s Oscars. Lee has successfully crossed the threshold from foreign to domestic cinema and is sitting comfortably, seemingly at home, in America’s cinema hall of fame.
The A-list filmmaker exhibits none of the pomposity you may expect from a multiple Oscar winner. In a recent phone interview, the soft-spoken Lee was still in the aftershock of all the publicity surrounding him.
“It feels like a monster – the phenomenon is bigger than the movie, bigger than me. I had that same feeling for ‘Crouching Tiger,’ as if I had opened a can of worms. Nonetheless, it is strangely gratifying indeed,” he says.
Despite losing the Best Picture Oscar to “Crash,” the ensemble picture that delves into America’s chronic racial tension, the director was in his usual, good-natured spirit after the ceremony. “We’re crashed!” he jokingly exclaimed as he embraced Annie Proulx, the writer of the short story on which “Brokeback Mountain” was based.
He later explained that not winning this year’s best picture award means that he still has something to look forward to in the next stage of his film career, and he vows to work harder to win the hearts of all Americans.
In addition to the three Oscars, “Brokeback Mountain” won accolades from the Venice International Film Festival, the Directors’ Guild, the British Film Academy and the Golden Globes and grossed millions of dollars worldwide, which lands Lee at the summit of his career.
However, as the Chinese proverb puts it, "success is preparation meeting opportunity.” Lee’s meteoric rise is not accidental but living proof that one’s persistence and good faith will pay dividends in the end.
“Everybody has their own ‘Brokeback Mountain’” is a recurring refrain that Lee often cites, and the director is not afraid to discuss his own elusive hills – the fictional metaphor of hidden secrets and past failures, which he candidly revisits.
He graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a master’s degree in film in 1984. For six years after graduation, Lee struggled to break into the film industry. Though his thesis film, “Fine Line,” garnered best student film and director awards, Lee was sitting at home writing screenplays that failed to attract financial backers.
From “Pushing Hands” in 1992 to “Brokeback,” Lee’s films may have boldly questioned patriarchal domination in society, but in reality, the director is in debt to his late father Lee Sheng, who passed away in 2004.
A principal of a prestigious public high school in a rural town in southern Taiwan, the elder Lee, like most Asian parents, had high hopes for his eldest son.
“My father wanted me to do something useful — like becoming a doctor or lawyer,” Lee recalls. But Lee twice failed the college entrance exams. In Taiwan’s oppressive and supercharged academic environment, this was a stigma for his well-respected family in its tight-knit community. Lee finally secured a place at the National Arts School in Taipei — then a lightly regarded vocational school where his passion for film and drama flourished. At 23, he left home to study drama at the University of Illinois.
The austere Lee Sheng, who belonged to a clan of feudal landlords who suffered during the civil war and fled mainland China with the Kuomintang government to Taiwan in 1949, disapproved of his son’s artistic inclination early on.
It was only in recent years that the father and son mended the gulf in their relationship. After making the action epic “Hulk,” which was regarded as a box office flop and Lee’s major career setback, Lee was confused and didn’t know where to turn. He contemplated quitting the film industry and taking a university teaching post. But Lee’s ailing father knew filmmaking was his true calling and thus advised his son “just put on the helmet and run toward the end.” Those golden words have spurred him on to overcome many hurdles and make “Brokeback Mountain.”
As an immigrant from Taiwan, Lee feels that being outside of the Hollywood power circle offers him a less biased perspective of American culture. “My first taste of America was through the Hollywood movies – lots of them – I watched as I was growing up in Taiwan. But once I lived here, I see the real America and I want to do something more genuine and truthful to this land,” he says.
Though the majestic “Brokeback Mountain” is often labeled a “gay western,” Lee disapproves of the catch phrase as it only belittles his brainchild. “ ‘Brokeback’ is not just about gays and roaming cowboys, it is an epic about the futile quest of love and the film speaks a universal language. I hope it will be regarded as one of the greatest American romances one day – in the same league as ‘Doctor Zhivago’ and ‘Casablanca,’ ” he says.
Perhaps nobody is better suited than Lee to depict the repression that runs deep in “Brokeback” – an emotional torrent he believes strikes a common chord in any culture, nationality or time period. “Repression fascinates me probably because I’m repressed one way or another. I know it from my first-hand experience,” Lee says. “I grew up in a very academic atmosphere in Taiwan, which was not fun at all. The Chinese shi da fu (intellectual) tradition dictates that filial piety and scoring high in exams are they only ways to get ahead in life, individual happiness and free will are not taken into the equation at all.”
Even though openly gay directors Gus Van Sant and Joel Schumacher were considered for the film, Lee believes being an Eastern artist, brought up under the more “liberal” Daoism and Buddhism religion and philosophies, has helped him explore the American west and see the marginalized gay community in a new light.
“Eastern culture is more feminine and all embracing while the West is more macho and definitive,” he says. “Homosexuality is never considered as a crime in Asian culture; it’s more of a social issue and personal attitude. Homophobia in the West largely stems from scrutiny from the churches as it may undermine masculinity in the patriarchal society. In a way, I guess that’s why American society is more tolerant of lesbians since they don’t pose a threat to the reigning males.”
Besides, he believes Eastern culture and the Western herdsmen share common traits. “Both cultures are very subtle and indirect and apt at using body language. They emphasize the beauty of melancholic emotions and value pain and suffering, and created a body of literature that explore expansive emotions in vast physical space,” he says.
Still, the director admits that it was challenging to tackle the non-verbal culture of the wild West. “We have thoroughly explored the verbal culture in costume drama “Sense and Sensibility” before and it seems natural that we take on a film that deals with its opposite. But then, cowboys are very shy, they don’t know what to do with their hands and they don’t talk much, so we have to rely on the landscape, costumes (e.g. the taciturn Ennis Del Mar, played by Heath Ledger, is represented by his earth tone clothing, done up jackets and cowboy hat which he uses to hide his emotions) and the use of space to covey their turbulent emotions underneath,” he explains.
“Brokeback” may have a strong sexual undertone and gripping emotional power, but as the director reveals, he used a minimalist approach for the sex scenes and even rolled the camera unrehearsed. “We try to avoid it till the last moment. It’s a low budget film, I cannot even say I pay them to do that,” he says. But Lee had faith in the creative risk he took on by going with a younger cast and giving the actors free reign to explore the intimate sequence, which provided the desired frankness and spontaneity on screen.
Lee remembers shooting the scene in which Ennis and Jack (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) explored their first taste of sexuality in a tent under the twilight. “It was well-lit, not like the way you saw in the film,” he says. “I was right there, very close, next to the camera. I remember thinking, ‘These guys are pretty brave, I don’t know if I can do that myself.’ ”
Despite the film’s success, witnessing some of the homophobic backlash – such as theaters in Utah and Texas refusing to screen his film – leaves Lee dumbfounded and has altered his view of the United States.
“It shows that Taiwan society and the Chinese public are more open-minded than their American counterparts. There was no censorship problem with my ‘Wedding Banquet,’ one of my earlier films which also dealt with the gay elements. I don’t understand why ‘Brokeback’ would cause such a stir here where the gay community has been very vocal and visible,” he says.
But as usual, Lee is undeterred by those who do not care for his work. It was evident in his defiance to the crowd pleasing, purely entertaining tradition of Chinese kung fu flicks with the philosophical “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” which is still shunned by many Chinese. “Brokeback” carries the same spirit the director is best known for – refusing to settle. After all he’s seen, Lee keeps his hopes high as he continues to reinvent existing genres and puncture the mystique surrounding the essence of Asian and American cultures.
http://www.eastwestmagazine.com/content/view/21/40/
