Ang Lee

• Born: 1954
• Place of Birth: Republic of China

TAIWANESE-BORN FILM DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, AND SCREENWRITER

Academy Award–winning filmmaker Ang Lee has produced a diverse catalog of work, including comedies, Hollywood monster movies, period romances, historical dramas, and martial-arts epics. Throughout his career, he has been unafraid to tackle controversial topics through a sympathetic, humanistic lens.

Full name: Ang Lee

Birth name: Li An

Area of achievement: Film

Early Life

Ang Lee was born Li An on October 23, 1954, in Taiwan. His father, Lee Sheng, was a high school principal and strict disciplinarian. He wanted his son to demonstrate academic prowess and fulfill his filial duties. According to the tradition of Confucian philosophy adhered to by many Chinese people, this meant Lee was expected to honor his parents and ancestors through educational and professional achievements. As a young man, Lee was not a particularly gifted student. He initially failed the entrance exams to university. Lee eventually enrolled as a theater and film major at the Taiwan Academy of Arts (now known as the National Taiwan University of Arts) and graduated in 1975.

Lee then moved to the United States at age twenty-three to pursue a bachelor of fine arts degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned his degree in theater and theater direction in 1980. Hampered by his accent, Lee had focused on directing instead of acting. It was during his time there that he met Jane Lin, another Taiwanese student and microbiology major. The couple married in 1983 and had two sons, Haan and Mason.

While his wife worked on her doctorate, Lee pursued graduate studies at the New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. The master’s degree program in film production allowed him to accrue valuable experience producing shorts, one of which, Shades of the Lake, won Best Short Film in Taiwan’s Golden Harvest Film Festival in 1982. This award helped him to secure a scholarship to continue his studies. Lee worked as the assistant cameraman on classmate Spike Lee’s film Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983).

Lee’s master’s thesis, A Fine Line (1985), focused on Chinese and Italian cultural interchange in New York City. The NYU Film Festival awarded it Best Film, and Lee received best-director honors, a strong endorsement for a man who was planning to return to Taiwan at the completion of his degree. It was through the unexpected interest of the famed talent agency William Morris Endeavor (WME) that Lee decided to stay in New York to pursue filmmaking opportunities, a decision that would severely test his commitment to his craft. He spent six years seeking viable filmmaking projects, doing research, and preparing screenplays.

Lee worked at home, taking care of the children, while his wife became the family breadwinner. It was an unconventional domestic arrangement for the son of a traditional Chinese patriarch. Although increasingly concerned about the future, Lee nonetheless maintained his strong ties with the Asian cinema scene. He entered a screenwriting contest held by the Taiwanese government to boost the country’s film industry. His two screenplay entries, which would eventually be named Pushing Hands (1991) and The Wedding Banquet (1993), won first- and second-place prizes, respectively. With the prize money, Lee began filming Pushing Hands, the story of an aged tai chi master who must adapt to America and a non-Asian daughter-in-law. The film showcased a major thematic and personal preoccupation for Lee: how best to quell a father’s doubts and earn a father’s respect and love. The clash-of-cultures motif resonated with the target Asian audience because it reiterated the importance of traditional filiality while underscoring the contemporary realities of interracial relationships, cross-generational tensions, and identity negotiation.

Life’s Work

The Wedding Banquet (1993), a low-budget comedy about a gay Taiwanese American who hides his sexuality from his conservative parents by marrying a Chinese green card seeker, marked Lee’s full-fledged arrival on the American independent/art-house scene. The movie was extremely profitable and earned Lee his first Academy Award nomination for best foreign-language film. Producer James Schamus of the Good Machine Film Company provided Lee with financial assistance. This was a pivotal moment for Lee. An academic, screenwriter, and film executive, Schamus became an indispensable colleague of and collaborator with Lee in the years to come.

Lee’s 1994 film, Eat Drink Man Woman, was filmed in Taiwan. It tells the story of an aging patriarch with extraordinary cooking skills. The man’s three attractive yet dissimilar daughters provide the film’s narrative tension. Using food as a central motif for the emotional ties that sustain life, the film depicts a sensitive interplay between parents and children. Eat Drink Man Woman garnered its director-screenwriter his second Academy Award nomination for best foreign-language film.

In 1995, Lee directed a film adaptation of Jane Austen’s 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility. Although he was surprised at the offer to direct the movie, he nonetheless plunged into the fastidious world of period filmmaking. Lee successfully created a romantic environment that is simultaneously lush and restrained. Actors Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, and Hugh Grant were part of an ensemble cast that earned Sense and Sensibility (1995) seven Academy Award nominations and one Oscar win. For Lee, the success of the film demonstrated his versatility and brought his name to Hollywood prominence.

Lee’s film The Ice Storm, a meditation on small-town familial dysfunction and sexual mores, was released in 1997. In 1999, he released the Civil War film Ride with the Devil.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) allowed Lee to fulfill a childhood ambition to shoot a martial-arts epic. For this production, he had access to a full roster of pan-Asian acting talent, from up-and-coming Zhang Ziyi (who plays the heroine, Jen) to established actors such as Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-fat. Experimenting with flying fight scenes and a lyrical, if indeterminate, conclusion, Lee’s labor of love electrified international audiences. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture but lost to Ridley Scott’s action film Gladiator (2000).

Lee’s next film, Hulk (2003), was not as successful as his previous work. Grappling with producers over plot and thematic direction, Lee witnessed the failure of the big-budget monster film. The failure was emotionally painful for Lee, who withdrew from the spotlight for a time. Thanks to the encouragement of his father, he returned to his art, taking up the film production of the story Brokeback Mountain (2005), based on a short story by E. Annie Proulx. The film, which depicts a gay romance between two cowboys, became a lightning rod for political controversy but was also a success among audiences and critics alike. As a result, Lee became the first Asian director to win the Academy Award for Best Director.

Lee directed the film adaptations Lust, Caution in 2007 and Taking Woodstock in 2009. Both films highlight the commonality of forbidden love and the emotional costs of honesty. With Lust, Caution especially, Lee suggests that self-revelation in the wrong circumstances can lead to pyrrhic victories, or victories at great cost, including death.

Lee's next film was 2012's Life of Pi, an adaptation of the 2001 novel of the same name by Yann Martel. The film follows an Indian teenager nicknamed Pi who finds himself sharing a lifeboat with a tiger after a shipwreck. Critical response to the film was highly positive, and it appeared on many critics' top-ten lists of best movies of the year. It was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won four, including a second best director win for Lee.

In 2016, Lee directed Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, an Iraq War drama. The film performed poorly at the box office and received mixed reviews. He followed that with 2019's Gemini Man, a sci-fi film starring Will Smith, which also received poor reviews from critics and audiences alike. In April 2021, Lee was awarded the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Fellowship, the organization's highest honor, becoming the first Chinese person to receive that distinction.

Lee received an award from the Tisch School of the Arts in 2024, four decades after he graduated. He was at that time still attempting to shepherd a Bruce Lee biopic that he had been trying to develop for years.

Significance

Several thematic continuities run through Lee’s films: a desire for acceptance (often between parents and children), a search for stability amidst flux and danger, an endorsement of universal love, the imperative of mutual cultural awareness, and the liberating, if also conflicted, positions held by outsider figures. Self-identifying as Chinese rather than an Asian American director, Lee has become one of the most successful and influential film directors in the entertainment industry.

Bibliography

"Ang Lee." Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com/name/nm0000487/. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Berry, Michael. Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers. Columbia UP, 2005.

Brooks, Xan. "Ang Lee: 'I Am Hulk! I Am the Hidden Dragon!'" The Guardian, 30 Jan. 2017, www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jan/30/ang-lee-billy-lynns-long-halftime-walk-film-brokeback-mountain. Accessed 21 Mar. 2017.

Dariotis, Wei Ming, and Eileen Fung. “Breaking the Soy Sauce Jar: Diaspora and Displacement in the Films of Ang Lee.” Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender. Edited by Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu. U of Hawaii P, 1997, pp. 187–220.

Dilley, Whitney Crothers. The Cinema of Ang Lee: The Other Side of the Screen. 2nd ed., Wallflower, 2015.

Fuller, Karla Rae, editor. Ang Lee: Interviews. UP of Mississippi, 2016.

Riley, Jenelle. "Ang Lee Talks Bruce Lee Biopic, NYU Tisch School Honor, and Why Making Movies Never Gets Easier: 'If Anything, It Gets Harder.'" Variety, 1 Apr. 2024, variety.com/2024/awards/awards/ang-lee-bruce-lee-biopic-nyu-tisch-honor-1235955275/. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Ritman, Alex. "Ang Lee to Be Awarded BAFTA Fellowhip." The Hollywood Reporter, 6 Apr. 2021, www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/ang-lee-to-be-awarded-bafta-fellowship-4161760/. Accessed 20 July 2021.