"The film is a kind of dream of China, a China that probably never existed except in my boyhood fantasies in Taiwan." So writes Ang Lee (李安), the director, who in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon brought serious social themes to the kung fu cinematic sub-genre. Instead of a simple clash of power, he aired a debate about the conflict of values that impacts upon Taiwan's youth. Should we sublimate our desires in honor of tradition, or seize our freedom and make off with Chang Chen (張震) to the Gobi Desert?
Lee, in addition, aestheticized the genre, creating battles on bamboo twigs and dance-like flight over roofs to the music of Tan Dun (潭盾). No one had thought these appropriate to the tough-guy, made-for-TV, action movies coming out of Hong Kong that were his predecessors in the format.
Lee's obsession with inter-generational conflict goes back a long way, suggesting a personal dilemma that has perhaps never been resolved. It was at the forefront of The Wedding Banquet (1993), and also of Sense and Sensibility (1995), in which Eleanor stood for family values, while her younger sister Marianne, all but fatally tried to cut loose and run from family. And these same conflicted family values were, of course, central to Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), a story that asks the question: does father really know best?
Lee, though appearing never to repeat himself when it comes to cinematic genre and style, nevertheless constantly returns to this topic for his underlying subject matter.
This volume from Faber, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: A Portrait of the Ang Lee Film, is for the most part a coffee-table picture book with brief remarks by some of the people involved in the movie. There isn't quite enough of either pictures or reminiscences, though, to bulk out its not-very-extensive length, so the "illustrated script" is also included in English and in its entirety. (There are no Chinese characters anywhere inside the publication, only ornamentally, one assumes, on the cover).
Essentially, this is an accessory to the film itself, and, at NT$750, a rather over-priced one at that. But there are always people who will buy this kind of thing, and the publishers are clearly aware of this.
To its credit, the book does contain some revealing insights into how the Oscar-winning film was created on the ground. The most interesting of these comes as single- or half-page takes, in many cases from the mouth of Lee himself.
We learn, for instance, that Chow Yun-fat (周潤發) had never touched a sword in his life before making this movie. And that when he arrived at Beijing airport, customs operations closed down completely for 45 minutes. All the customs officers were in line waiting to get his autograph.
The scene in which the characters Mu Bai (Chow) and Jen (Zhang Ziyi, 章子怡) battle aloft the bamboo's flimsy branches, as if in an aerial dance tribute to Tarzan of the Apes, receives the most coverage, explaining how the scene was all done with wires.
"I supervised 300 wire-removals, sky replacement, and the coloring of the entire bamboo sequence on the computer during post-production in Hong Kong," writes the film's director of photography, Peter Pau (鮑德熹). His team worked with him non-stop to meet the deadline for the Cannes Film Festival. They were nothing if not meticulous -- some of the most difficult wire-removing exercises took two months to complete due to the fact that there were thousands of leaves moving continuously in the background.
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