In interview after interview Ang Lee (李安)
made it clear that he did not want Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍) to be an art house film. Instead, he wanted to break out of the art house ghetto that Asian filmmakers typically find themselves in. Four Oscars and record-breaking box office figures have shown that Lee more than achieved his objective. The question on most people's minds now is, how did he do it?
"Ang [Lee] went around the country during the promotion stage. His devotion doing promotional activities was no less than the effort he put into shooting the film," said Michael Barker of Sony Pictures Classics.
PHOTO: YU SEN-LUN, TAIPEI TIMES
Speaking from an American point of view, Barker says the success of the film lies in its message about the richness of culture. "It's a film that combines love, humanity, exoticness. And it was the first time that American audiences go to see such things," he said.
But more importantly, Barker said, it was Lee's adept story telling that powered the movie. "He went to every city, spoke to the media and to everyone, giving as much as he could to explain the culture and the context of the story," Barker said.
"In my press kit for this film, I prepared a solid introduction [for Western audiences] about the genre of martial arts films. I also included articles talking about this tradition, like the special terms used and weapons carried by the fighters," Lee told the Taipei Times in an interview before the film's US release. Another factor behind the film's success was the marketing strategy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Sony Pictures Classics is a branch company of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which focuses on distributing art house and independent films, as distinct from Sony Pictures Entertainment.
According to Barker, the film's market was established from the beginning as "young, art house viewers, both men and women." In December, the first month of Crouching Tiger's US release, the movie was shown in less than a dozen theaters in New York city and Los Angeles. As media hype grew, the film quickly expanded to the general public, playing in 800 theaters throughout the US by January.
Major film critics from the New York Times and Chicago Sun Times, as well as the author Salman Rushdie all weighed in on the film, heaping praise on its universal themes and appealing Chinoiserie. In January, the American Film Critics Circle named Crouching Tiger the best foreign-language film, marking the first stop as it barrelled its way to winning four Oscars. Along the way, the movie scooped up awards from the LA Film Critics Circle, the New York Film Critics Circle, the Golden Globe Awards and the British Academy Awards.
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