"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.
Even so, it was a scene no one wanted to do at the beginning. The first three days of shooting, with some 30 people on the ground unsuccessfully trying to make Mu Bai and Jen float, were a total disaster, and the results had to be abandoned.
Again, the Gobi Desert is the hottest and driest place on earth. But when Lee's team turned up to film, it rained non-stop, ruining their schedule. The locals put it down to the crew lighting incense every morning, a routine they undertook daily when on location. The Gobi people only burn incense when they need rain, they were told.
Fascinating, too, is the account of how Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊), a Malaysian, had to learn her part in Mandarin syllable by syllable, having no knowledge of the language when shooting began.
A writer based in Taiwan, Wang Hui-ling (王慧玲), is credited with transforming the script from that of a fast-paced narrative to something full of Chinese cultural resonances. Lee's fellow script writer James Schamus credits the film with faithfully spanning two worlds as a result of this input when he notes that "it is one of the truly delicious ironies of this movie that although I co-wrote it, I'll never fully understand all of its meanings." There are other things. There is, for instance, a concise history of the genre, and of Chinese martial arts in general, from David Bordwell, professor of film studies at the University of Wisconsin. But anyone remotely interested in the subject can easily find a great deal more elsewhere.
Lee appropriately has the last word, literally and in the sense of saying what matters most about his film. He reveals himself as fully aware of what he was doing, how he was enlarging a local style into something more universal. But he also is of no two minds about the movie's fundamental values.
Jen (Zhang Ziyi) represents the vigor and independence of youth, while Li and Yu (Chow and Yeoh) hide their love for each other almost until the end.
"Jen is the real hero," Lee writes. "Bound by the forces of society, Li and Yu never fully enjoyed the thrills and excitement of youth. They pay dearly for their status; regrets mount as their youth fades." It seems unlikely that Lee has finished with this topic for good. It will be interesting to see how he introduces it into his next movie, to be based on the comic strip story The Incredible Hulk.
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