Lang Hsiung ( 郎雄 ) has come to represent the typical Chinese father figure in Taiwan films. His leading roles in Lee Ang’s ( 李安 ) three acclaimed films—Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet, and Eat Drink Man Woman—have portrayed a man who is authoritative and somewhat distant, and who abides by traditional values yet struggles to understand the modern values of his children. Lang plays his roles with a sense of natural ease, a manner he also portrays in real life.
Lang says he views acting as a form of leisure rather than a job. Now sixty-five, he began his career thirty-nine years ago by joining drama contests while in the Army. Beginning in the 1970s, he became a household name in Taiwan by appearing in numerous TV serial dramas. In 1991, he won a Golden Horse award for best actor in Pushing Hands, and since then has developed an international reputation as a film star. But because acting is “the art of regret,” no one role has been his favorite. “I always feel it could have been better,” he says, “if I could have done it a little bit this way or that way.”
Aside from being shorter than he appears on screen, Lang seems much the same in person as in his recent film roles. As one might guess, he is an unpretentious man who expresses his opinions frankly. He met with the Free China Review at a Catholic church in Taipei, where he stops off every morning to pray.
FCR: What are the main characteristics of a good actor?
Lang Hsiung: I think the first requirement is an eagerness for learning, imitating, and re-creating. You have to learn by perfecting your skills. It’s not something you’re born with. Some people say an actor should have “performance genes.” If so, then I’m not suitable for the job, because I’m not versatile and I have no talent. But whenever I act, I am quite empathetic.
Second, you have to be crazy about acting. No matter what job you do, you have to love it, love to play around with it. If you ask me to do something else, I’ll get tired quickly. But acting makes me happy, although it’s sometimes hard physically and requires endless repetition. Third, actors should be humble, because nobody is perfect and nobody knows all the tricks.
What trends do you see in Taiwan films nowadays?
Filmmaking is always changing, and a lot of people want to be at the head of the latest trend. Some prefer to make commercial pictures while others treasure art films. I think it’s not good to go to any extreme; it’s better to have both in one film. After all, a film is a commercial product after it’s made. It is the director’s responsibility to ensure the quality of a film, but what the producer wants to make sure is that it will sell. While we’re against Hollywood because of its commercialization, we should also take into account the fact that all countries around the world have been conquered by Hollywood films. What we should study is why Hollywood succeeds. Some might say it’s because Hollywood has money. But that’s not the only reason. It also has intelligence.
This is a psychological complex—people criticize Hollywood because they can’t compete with it. A good example is the film awards in Europe. They purposely give the awards to new directors who make low-cost films. A movie is a movie; it’s not good to make a film a documentary on purpose. Some French directors emphasize the author of a film; in other words, none of the actors and actresses have to act because they’re the tools of the director. But in fact, a movie is expressed through acting. It needs actors or even stars. If you want to report something, you can use words or pictures. Why use such an expensive medium as film? What they do now is express ideas that people cannot understand. I think what you should do is make films that are enjoyable to the audience.
When Mei Chang-ling (梅長齡) headed the Central Motion Picture Corporation [in the 1970s], I told him we should push one good film to the international stage every year without considering the cost. I believe we cannot help but win over the long run. It’s not necessary that every film be artistic; we can make one art film and nine commercial ones in order to balance things financially. The artistic one should represent Chinese characteristics well in order to give foreigners a better understanding of Chinese people—but too much is as bad as not enough.
I think we should tell the world what Chinese are like today. Mainland China likes to show scenes of the Cultural Revolution while Taiwan presents the 2-28 Incident [a violent clash between government troops and island residents in 1947]. I don’t understand why directors prefer Chinese people in poverty to folks who are now free and well-to-do. It’s not necessary to reopen historical wounds by showing the sufferings of the past. We should tell people how well off we are now—we are a people with dignity. Individual cases cannot represent the whole. When there are more positive aspects, why do we select to display the negative ones like violence and the underworld?
It’s the same in the United States. American directors repeatedly present sad stories about Jews in concentration camps during World War II. Of course, there are problems in our society, such as those presented by Lee Ang and Tsai Ming-liang ( 蔡明亮 ) [director of Venice award-winner Vive l’amour]. Their films are stories about today’s Chinese people, with themes such as lack of communication and the breakdown of the family.
What do you think of the government’s filmmaking assistance fund?
It’s not necessary. I think the government had better not get involved in the filmmaking industry, but let it live or die without outside interference. If the Government Information Office wants to give a hand, the assistance fund should be given to directors who can return the money. That way, more directors could get help the next year from the money that is returned. After all, the fund is to provide help, not relief aid.
Some of those who’ve gotten the assistance money have made films that run for only a few days. They make the same mistakes as some French directors who use government funds to say something people cannot understand, then criticize the low level of the audience. They can do that as long as they’re spending their own money, like Edward Yang (楊德昌) [who solicits corporate support for his films, which include The Terrorizers, A Brighter Summer Day, and A Confucian Confusion].
While we criticize Hong Kong movies as low-class commercial farces, we forget the fact that they don’t have a government assistance fund to support them. They have to meet the demands of the market; otherwise, they’d disappear immediately. That’s why they have to use superstars and special effects to attract audiences.
On the other hand, the American film industry has to support itself, but directors there do make good films. It’s not right to blame the government whenever you make a mistake. There is nothing new or old in the arts, only good and bad. The bad does not become good just because there is something worse.
The government assistance fund is a matter of goodwill, but there have been some negative side effects. When there was no such fund, producers controlled their budgets better. Since the fund was offered, some producers are happy because they’ll lose less money rather than because they can invest more and make better films. Besides, is it fair to have scholars and experts evaluate a script? What are their standards?
What are the main difficulties encountered in Taiwan filmmaking today?
We have to train more people for behind the scenes—technicians such as sound-recording personnel and cinematographers. What we lack most are producers. Today’s producers don’t know filmmaking, so they just do trivial things the director asks for. But producers should be people who are able to control a budget and promote a film. Basically, a producer is responsible for finding all the right personnel, including the director, the scriptwriter, the cinematographer, the performers, and the rest of the crew. In addition, they have to have an international vision and be able to maintain good relations with the PR companies in each important film locale. But the fact is that [in Taiwan] the producer just provides the funds while the director is in charge of everything else.
Another thing that worries me is that all the filmmaking students who study abroad want to be directors right after they graduate. They don’t even realize that they have no experience. On-the-job training is much more important than academic work. They have to adapt to the environment here and learn from experienced directors.
The market is also a big problem. We have to make good films to get into the international market. When the audience feels we’ve worked hard, they’ll have confidence in us and continue to see our pictures. I think joining international film festivals is a form of promotion. As for the local market—it’s unstable and unpredictable. We don’t know what audiences like because there haven’t been any surveys. I also think lots of [local] people don’t believe we are capable of making good films, so locally made films might only sell well after they win international awards. Besides, many people prefer to watch videotapes and LDs at home. Therefore, filmmakers have to produce high-quality movies that people won’t want to watch on a TV screen, and theater owners also have to invest more in their sound and projection equipment.
How would you characterize the local method of making films?
Local directors work very fast, while directors trained in the United States work according to a schedule. I like the American method better. Because it involves a long preparation time to establish a tacit understanding among all the workers, the film can be deeper and the body language better coordinated. Lee Ang [who studied filmmaking in the United States] directs films by gathering together all the workers and performers to take some courses before shooting the film. During this time, the performers might even have to live together, to get used to one another and to establish some mutual understanding.
The Taiwan style is more improvisational. It doesn’t forbid performers from acting in several films at the same time—they get their characters all mixed up. The stars think they have to make big money in just a few years, so they act in several similar films in one year and thus cut their careers short.
In most films made by directors who studied abroad, the performers are like a family. But pictures by locally trained directors look unnatural and awkward because it seems there is no internal connection among the actors. The performers should also bear some responsibility because some of them just want to make big money in a short time. They’re not actors but money trees. I think acting should be like playing basketball. You have to know where you should be before your partner passes the ball to you. It’s impossible to make a good film if one player doesn’t know how to catch a ball that’s flying toward him.
Also, the lens should represent the subjective view of the audience so that the director can lead people into his world. It should be smooth, easy to follow, and not involve playing tricks with the camera. Description is better than explanation or commentary, but the description should be lively; otherwise, the audience will fall asleep.
Perhaps I’m not modern enough. Films today have a lot of dialogue and little plot because the directors just do what they want. But is it what the audience wants? Some directors make their films hard to understand on purpose, and they say, “It wouldn’t be me if you could understand it.” Impressionism and abstractionism in painting and stream of consciousness in literature have come into filmmaking while some of the techniques and advantages that are exclusive to film are being abandoned. In fact, film is a kind of recreation; it’s not so great as a form of education, as some people have suggested. The best a movie can do is make the audience think and reflect.
—interview by Virginia Sheng