For years, film director and auteur Lee Ang was
haunted by the knowledge that his parents thought
he had chosen a highly unconventional career.
But then he found a way of making up for his lack
of filial piety: his films kept winning awards. This
year, it's an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
Most ladies approaching their seventy-sixth birthday would probably be looking forward to a quiet family affair. Mrs. Lee, however, is not your average lady, and her birthday on April 23 was destined to cause quite a stir on the island. For two months before the great day dawned the mailman was staggering under the weight of good wishes that poured in from all over the place. A constant stream of reporters graced her doorway, while old family photos had to be dragged out of hiding to satisfy the growing army of the curious and fill the entertainment sections of the newspapers.
By the end of March, most people in Taiwan knew exactly what this lady would be getting for her birthday: a visit from her extraordinary son, Lee Ang, or Ang Lee as he is mostly known in the West: the first filmmaker from Taiwan to win an Academy Award. He had been working up to it slowly. Last year, he celebrated his father's eightieth birthday with a Golden Bear from the Berlin Film Festival. On April 22 of this year, however, he arrived at Chiang Kai-shek international airport with an even better present for his mom in his backpack--an Oscar statuette wrapped in a pillowcase that the director claimed, tongue in cheek, to have "stolen" from EVA Airways.
Not that EVA cared; if Lee had asked, they would probably have thrown in the plane as well. The dutiful son's return was swiftly transformed into a week-long media jamboree. A press conference was scheduled for a few hours after his arrival in the hope that it would satisfy people's curiosity once and for all, but that proved to be just a warm-up. The unassuming filmmaker charmed the press with his shy, amiable smile and inspired sense of humor, attracting a troop of journalists everywhere he went. But fame has scarcely touched the core of this man, who remains the humblest celebrity anyone here can remember. One reporter asked him: "How come you're still so modest, now that you've accomplished what most Taiwanese film directors couldn't even dream of?" Lee's answer was simple but compelling. "I really can't see anything to be smug about."
No one would disagree that Lee's good nature is on a par with his excellent professional reputation. Whenever people talk about him, words like "gentle," "polite," and "thoughtful" are sure to find their way into the conversation. One of the few who can honestly claim to know him well is Lang Hsiung, who starred in the director's trilogy about the trials and tribulations of fatherhood--Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet , and Eat Drink Man Woman. He has been working with Lee ever since the director's first movie, Pushing Hands, released in 1991.
In the mind of the writer-director, Lang will always encapsulate the archetypal screen "father figure," because Lee modeled the characters the actor plays on his own father. Indeed, the two men developed a friendship with something of a father-son flavor to it, part of the Lee Ang myth in Taiwan's movie circles. The "fatherhood" trilogy constituted a box-office miracle in Taiwan, and the three men responsible for it--director Lee Ang, male lead Lang Hsiung, and producer Hsu Li-kung--became known as "the invincible trio."
"I first met Lee Ang the day before he was due to go back to the United States to start shooting Pushing Hands," Lang Hsiung recalls with obvious affection. "We clicked straightaway, because we both wanted to make good movies. The first time we worked together, we went over and over the character I played, but by the time we did Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon we only had to exchange a few words. He's such a gifted director, and an agreeable one to work with, too. He keeps an open mind, and he's got good eyes. He knows exactly what the priorities are, which is an important quality in a director. I told him ten years ago that he'd have a good chance of winning an Oscar one day, as long as he kept at it. I've watched him grow from a nobody to a notable auteur and a mature movie professional, but he hasn't changed a bit in the way he treats other people. He's rare."
Lee Ang is the eldest son in a traditional Chinese family, which means he was born burdened with higher expectations and weightier responsibilities than his siblings. They lived in the south of the island. His father Lee Sheng is a retired schoolmaster who used to be the principal of the high school Lee Ang attended, the Tainan First Senior High School for Boys. "I was shy and very depressed in those days," the director told an assembly at his alma mater during his recent trip to Taiwan. "I tried to avoid my father at school, because it would be embarrassing to run into him and not know whether to call him sir or father. It was also stressful to be the son of the school principal, because people set you higher standards, and you weren't allowed to fail at anything."
But the melancholy, dreamy principal's son surprised everyone by failing the most important test in any Taiwanese schoolboy's life, the university entrance exam, not once but twice. He ended up at the National Taiwan College of Arts, assigned to study film directing in the Cinematography Department. Before long, he found himself standing in front of his father and claiming that he had discovered what he truly wanted to do in life. His father was sympathetic, but insisted that Lee must study abroad after completing college.
"Life is full of oddities," Lee Ang told the students at his old school. "Turning points usually show up just as you think you're losing it all. Joy and sorrow alternate with each other to enrich our lives. For me, life didn't begin until I graduated from high school. I didn't choose to make movies; movies chose me." He was deeply moved when the audience yelled: "We're proud of you!" "If ever you think about following in my footsteps," he told them, "follow the ones I made after high school!"
When addressing the present members of his old school, he did not neglect to mention the pressures a budding moviemaker has to endure from family, friends, and society in general. "He'll have to deal with a heavy sense of insecurity. He must be resolute, strong-willed, and healthy enough to survive all sorts of ordeals." The words reflected the speaker's own experiences. For six years after he earned his master's degree from New York University he was just a homemaker. Jane Lin, his wife and a college lecturer, paid the bills while her husband waited for all-too-elusive opportunities.
But the days of idleness ended with a double prize. In 1990 he won two awards for screenwriting from the ROC Government Information Office (GIO). The two winning screenplays were Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet. It was enough to persuade Hsu Li-kung, then the deputy general manager of Taiwan's Central Motion Picture Corp., to fund Lee to the tune of NT$13.5 million (US$409,090), thus enabling him to make Pushing Hands in the United States.
With limited resources and virtually no experience, the rookie director duly finished his first feature film, which went on to win nine nominations at the Taipei Golden Horse Awards and establish a fine box-office record. Unfortunately, however, Pushing Hands' success was confined to Taiwan, being perceived as too "culturally individual" to break through elsewhere.
Nevertheless, that first film proved enough of a springboard to launch Lee on his next project, The Wedding Banquet, at which point US professor and screenwriter James Schamus joined the team full-time. "James was actually more of a producer than a screenwriter," Lee told the Taipei Review after his recent high-school reunion. "He offered just the kind of help I needed after years of fruitless experimenting all by myself. He'd produce some dialogue and create new scenes from a Westerner's perspective, to make our films marketable. There's really no clear-cut division of labor. He's been a career partner, involved in every aspect of our projects throughout, including the marketing campaigns. I'm more conservative, less hip, and James compensates for that by judging things from a producer's perspective."
The Wedding Banquet was a phenomenal hit, and not just in Taiwan, where it won Golden Horse Awards for best film and best director, along with three others. The movie also scored prizes and kudos elsewhere, including the nomination for the Best Foreign Picture Oscar in 1994. By now the bandwagon was rolling, and Lee Ang became a regular nominee and winner at various overseas film festivals. In 1996 came another chance to toe the red-carpeted Academy Awards aisle with Sense and Sensibility, but on this occasion the Taiwanese director failed to make it all the way to the dais. It was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that finally brought him bittersweet triumph: sweet, because it represented the culmination of his Oscar dreams, bitter (if only in the mouths of family, friends, and well-wishers) in that the judges passed him over for Best Director.
How did Lee feel about his triumph? At a press conference last April he began by saying that the award was a recognition of the hard work required of moviemakers. "I am thrilled that this mainstream award acknowledges my efforts over the years," he said. "The rewards didn't come by chance. They honor the endeavors of many contributors who are no longer here, and their successors. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has made history, and I feel very honored to be part of that history." A big part, indeed. If it were not for Lee Ang's insight and perseverance, the movie might have been just another martial-arts saga based on one of the novels of mainland Chinese author Wang Dulu, who wrote the story that inspired the Oscar-winning movie.
The project was by no means a sure thing. Classical, "poetic" martial-arts movie epics had been out of fashion for more than two decades when Lee Ang started working on Wang Dulu's story, so no one knew where the market would be by the time he finished or whether there actually would be a market at all. The fact that Taiwan's motion picture industry was in the doldrums and had been for some time made Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon look even riskier. There were no obvious signs of revival, while dwindling resources--funds, equipment, and skilled personnel--were all too painfully obvious. As the director describes it, solving problems consumed 80 percent of his energy, with only 20 percent left for the creation of the film.
"Mere words can't describe the difficulties we had in making this movie," Lee says. "Once I get a story in my mind that I want to tell on the screen, there's no way I can put things off until the environment's just right. What I did was to get by in my own way, and make good use of as many resources as I could get." He managed to extract US$15 million from Columbia TriStar Pictures (Asia), arranged to shoot in China, and put together a crew that included members and talents from Taiwan, the mainland, and Hong Kong. "China offered a better working environment than I'd expected," Lee recalls. "The crew are motivated. They dream about making movies. Hong Kong is strong on production, organization, and marketing."
And Taiwan? "In Taiwan, things are pretty much done in the old, disorganized way," Lee admits ruefully. "You're forced to spend a lot of time finding your way around an intricate human network. But things can go smoothly if you spark the right chemistry." In Lee's view, China has the advantage of rich resources--historical monuments, majestic landscapes, efficient studios--and manpower, while Hong Kong moviemakers excel in technical expertise.
China also provides a huge market, but one that suffers from too many restrictions when outsiders try to break into it. For that reason he preferred to target the smaller market in Taiwan, even though there most locally made films meet with a cold response. "Many experienced Taiwanese directors are as confused as I am," he claims. "We have no idea what a 'mainstream motion picture' is for a local audience, or what we should do to 'fit in.'"
No prophet is without honor save in his own country, of course, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon enjoyed its greatest success elsewhere than in Taiwan. Wang Cheng-hua, secretary-general of the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival's executive committee, considers this phenomenon an example of how distance can transform aesthetic sensibilities. "The cultural barrier works positively for this movie," he says. "Taiwan moviegoers have more or less become inured to this type of film, so they wouldn't be surprised by the movie's gravity-defying scenes in the way foreigners would. Lee Ang must give credit to the martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-ping and his crew."
Yuen Woo-ping won a Golden Horse in 2000, the year when Lee controversially lost the Best Director award to his Hong Kong counterpart Jonnie To. But past disappointments hold little fascination for Lee Ang now that he has won his Oscar.
ROC President Chen Shui-bian came to visit Lee's family in Tainan the day after the birthday celebration. (He and the director had been schoolmates, although the president was in a senior year.) President Chen praised Lee Ang for his remarkable achievement, noting that he had established a model for cross-strait cooperation that was free of ideological overtones. Lee, for his part, took the opportunity to speak about the need to improve Taiwan's movie environment. He suggested that the government set up film libraries and encourage entrepreneurial investment. The president heeded the advice, instructing the GIO to emphasize support for the island's movie industry as part of the island's ongoing cultural restructuring.
Lee Khan, Lee Ang's younger brother, gave up a business career to concentrate on directing and writing films and TV sitcoms--a move that he admits was inspired at least in part by his brother's example. "It's essential to stimulate commercial interest in funding film production," says this junior member of the clan. "While many people regard movies as a serious art form, you've got to admit that they're also popular entertainment. Movies are made to be seen, and there's a huge potential audience in the middle-of-the-road sector: not too arty and not too trashy either. The best scenario is where you simultaneously fulfill the expectations of the investor, the filmmaker, and the audience. The government can help with the marriage between creation and production by cultivating talented movie professionals and stimulating investment opportunities."
In past years, the GIO has taken a number of measures with a view to rejuvenating Taiwan's cinema environment, but the problems that remain are manifold. Hollywood rules the roost, funding is hard to attract, and there are too few screenwriters about. According to Kiang Chuan-ching, director of the GIO's Motion Picture Affairs Department, the agency spends NT$230 million (US$6.9 million) on Taiwan's motion picture industry annually. A moderate chunk of the money funds ten filmmakers whose screenplays are chosen by a committee made up of movie experts, critics, and academics. The rest of the money goes on prizes for screenplays, documentaries, and directors; subsidies to update production equipment; pushing for locally made films to be shown in Taiwan's cinemas; coordinating the annual Golden Horse Awards; and documenting Taiwan's cinema culture. "Taiwan's moviegoers have been alienated from domestically made films by the ever-expanding range of distractions, DVD, cable TV, the Internet, and so on," Kiang says. "We keep a close eye on the market and are trying to adjust our spending policy to help the truly talented people who are committed to making good movies."
Lee Ang was honored by the GIO, which awarded him NT$1 million (US$30,300) in April this year. To nobody's surprise, he donated the money to his former high school to establish a fund for the promotion of artistic and literary talent.
When Lee started making Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , he had only one purpose in mind: to make a martial-arts film that he had been nurturing in his heart for five years, and make it a treat for the audience. Modest as he is, he did not expect the movie to transform him into the "golden inspiration" of Taiwan's filmmakers, or anticipate that it would become a colossal global success. "I make movies to communicate with the audience," he says. "Anything else is a bonus. If my movies touch the hearts of audiences, I think it's probably because I happen to be an ordinary guy who likes the same things other people do."
LEE ANG'S FILMOGRAPHY
1991 Pushing Hands
1993 The Wedding Banquet
1994 Eat Drink Man Woman
1994 Sense and Sensibility
1997 The Ice Storm
1999 Ride with the Devil
2000 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
2001 Berlin Diaries, 1940-45