Ang Lee’s best quotes: Hulk director says Jackie Chan and Jet Li films represent ‘the worst’ of Chinese culture, and why he may be too melodramatic
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Arguably, though, none can match the accomplishments of Taiwanese director Ang Lee, the man behind modern classics including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Lust, Caution and The Wedding Banquet. He has won a clutch of awards in Asia at both the Hong Kong Film Awards and Golden Horse awards. In Europe, he twice won the top prize at both the Berlin and Venice film festivals, as well as two Bafta awards. Not even success in America has eluded him – his films have won a total of nine Golden Globes over the years. For years, Lee was tipped to become the first Chinese director to win best director at the Oscars and he duly delivered, not once but twice, winning for Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Life of Pi (2012).
In celebration of Lee’s 66th birthday, STYLE looks back at some of the director’s most memorable quotes.
On Jackie Chan and Jet Li, in The Guardian
“I have two sons in America, and all they care about in Chinese culture is Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Those films present probably the worst, most raucous part of Chinese culture. I want to straighten that out. So my parental affection comes into the project.”
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On his father’s disapproval, in Interview magazine
“The way I grew up, women didn’t matter as much, as you might guess. It was all about the father. My father was the centre of the family, and everyone tried to please him. After doing about three films about fathers and sons, I realised that there is a family tree in the Chinese tradition represented by this patriarch character. Everyone, even the women, work to preserve that social structure.
“My father never encouraged me. Even when I got the Oscar [for Brokeback Mountain], he never encouraged me. So even though I had gotten an Oscar and had made some films, now it was time to do something for real.”
On the Chinese film market, at the 2016 Britannia Awards
“It’s huge, it’s going to be bigger in a few years. In a few years it’s probably going to be bigger [than the US] and then in the years to come a lot bigger. They’ve got many people and, most importantly, film has been lacking in the past in the culture, so it’s still fresh.”
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On making a Chinese film, on CNN’s Talk Asia
“After I [have] done some American film dealing with different subject matter, texture – working with people, polishing my skills, whatever – I always feel the need to come back to my cultural roots to re-examine, and also use the skill and the resources, so to speak. It’s harder for me to make Chinese films, because first of all, psychologically, it’s more personal, the texture is more personal to me, it just hurts more.”
On making Marvel movie Hulk, speaking to Ryan Gilbey in The Guardian
“Hulk was the one time I had absolute freedom, which may be good or bad. Whatever I wanted, at any expense, was mine. It was like I was on a shopping spree. Anything goes! I’m still proud of Hulk, but I underestimated the power of genre and how you have to wrestle with a general audience.”
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On “multidimensional filmmaking”, in The Talks
“It started from Life of Pi. I didn’t know how to crack the book and I thought if I have a different dimension … That’s a silly thought to begin with but I actually thought a different dimension might help me to philosophically crack the book. So I used first person and third person storytelling because that’s what the book does. That exact value of the story is in the story – but that’s very hard to do in the movie because the required attention is mandatory and it’s very real. It’s not nice to tell the people what they’re seeing is fake while you’re showing the movie, right?”
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On juggling the demands of Asian and Western audiences, in The Guardian
“Because anticipation is high, I try to scoop up all the audience without disgracing myself. In Asia I have to deliver the film like a summer blockbuster, like a Jackie Chan movie; but afterwards I have to bring the movie to the West and release it like an art-house film, because of subtitles. I try to please everyone. I look at American films, the big muscles, and try to apply that to Chinese filmmaking.”
On the importance of emotion, in Interview magazine
“There is more than one way to make films. To me it has to be led by emotion. That’s the only thing I could trust when making a movie. Emotions serve characters’ purposes. That is their motivation. Or at least it’s my safety net. The times you just don’t know what to do, every day people are asking you hundreds of questions: what should we do about this? The that? If we can’t do this, what about that? You have to have something centred around you, and to me, that’s always emotion. I’m an emotional person; maybe I rely on it. Maybe I’m melodramatic, I don’t know.”
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The Life of Pi, Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon director on the record – 8 Ang Lee quotes that reveal his attitude to film, family and more