Ang Lee is getting radical this time.
Behind the genteel smile and soft voice is a man who is determined to use his name and talent to provoke the world’s moviemakers and viewers.
For director Ang Lee, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a film that takes advantage of groundbreaking technology to depict how the dawning of new cinema in the new age should look.
Both a master and a student of film, Lee alternates between two roles. The passion he shows and the dedication he exerts can make observers anxious yet deeply inspired.
Clad in a simple T-shirt in his New York studio, his hair sprinkled with gray, Lee gave us an overview of the ideas behind 3D movies. His patient tone failed to cover an underlying anxiousness. Such an advanced movie format and the effects and experiences it delivers is so new and impactful as to defy easy description. Moments before the interview, watching a 22-minute clip in Lee’s viewing room, the experience was like being drawn into the scene, sans movie screen to witness the mortar cannon in front of me blow the retaining wall to my left to smithereens, while the comrade to my right broke out in sweat, veins bulging in his face.
A Soldier on the Cinematic Battlefield
If the movie theater is a battlefield, a major international director like Ang Lee is a general with the power to move heaven and earth. Yet Lee describes himself as a soldier in the trenches who has to dodge artillery fire while looking after his brothers in arms. Still, no matter how chaotic it gets, he must put his mind to work and expend physical energy to progress toward his goals.
The last time Ang Lee consented to such an extensive interview with CommonWealth was 2008, on the occasion of our commemorative four-hundredth issue under the special theme of “Growth.”
At the age of 31, Ang Lee’s master’s thesis at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, entitled Fine Line, earned him New York University Film Festival’s top two awards for Best Film and Best Director. Having already packed up in preparation for returning to Taiwan, this led to his fateful decision to remain in the United States to have a go at a career in filmmaking.
At the age of 41, Ang Lee once again made a splash on the international cinema scene with Sense and Sensibility, becoming the only director to win the Golden Bear (the festival’s highest honor) twice (Lee had first won the award in 1993 for The Wedding Banquet) at the Berlin Film Festival.
At the age of 51, his film Brokeback Mountain garnered 71 awards at various film festivals, as well as sweeping the Oscars, making Lee the first Asian and Chinese director to earn the Academy Award for Best Director.
Now 61, Ang Lee stands atop the foundation of success established four years ago by the global box office hit Life of Pi with a new film made with the most advanced technology in cinema history, shot at 120 frames per second. In one move, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk throws down the gauntlet for the new filmmaking and presentation of the next generation.
Ang Lee has never wasted a single decade. The experience, interpersonal relations, reputation, and force of will accumulated over that time have enticed Hollywood’s most advanced film crews to work side-by-side with him.
Suffering from a week-long bout of tonsillitis, Lee looked somewhat forlorn during our interview at his studio. Nevertheless, he answered every question posed to him, never acting like a big-time Hollywood director. He discussed the merits of different projection formats with his lighting director, fielded calls from his movie distributor and the New York Times, and took a few bites of a sandwich when he was hungry, acting like the busy man he is with a seemingly endless stack of tasks on his plate.
“Is there pressure on this film to win an Oscar?” came the inevitable and unavoidable question. “As long as people get to see it, and you tell others about it, then I’ll be happy. I can’t tell how people will respond to something new, or wonder which format members of the Academy should watch. I’d rather not think about these things for now,” he chuckles.
[By Yueh-lin Ma / tr. by David Toman]