Born in Pingtung County, Lee was educated in Taiwan and later in the United States. He rose to prominence directing films such as Pushing Hands (1991), The Wedding Banquet (1993), and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), which explored the relationships and conflicts between tradition and modernity, Eastern and Western; the three films are informally known as the Father Knows Best trilogy.[7] The films were critically successful both in Taiwan and internationally.
"the formation of an individual decides their world perception, especially the things that happen before one is 20, so since he did not go to the US until he was 23, "whatever I do, whatever I absorb outside [Taiwan], my nature remains very Taiwanese... The basic me was growing up here, mixed with a lot of other things. Taiwan is like this. Wherever I shoot my film, it is a Taiwanese film"
-Ang Lee, speaks of his attachment to Taiwan. Sabine Cheng & Lilian Wu, October 1, 2016[8]
Lee studied in the Provincial Tainan First Senior High School (now National Tainan First Senior High School) where his father was the principal. He was expected to pass the annual Joint College/University Entrance Examination, the only route to a university education in Republic of China. But after failing the exam twice, to the disappointment of his father, he entered a three-year college, the National Arts School (now reorganized and expanded as National Taiwan University of Arts), and graduated in 1975. His father had wanted him to become a professor, but he had become interested in drama and the arts in college. This early frustration set his career on the path of performance art. Seeing Ingmar Bergman's film The Virgin Spring (1960) was a formative experience for him.[12]
During graduate school, Lee finished a 16mm short film, Shades of the Lake (1982), which won the Best Drama Award in Short Film in Taiwan. His own thesis work, a 43-minute drama, Fine Line (1984), won NYU's Wasserman Award for Outstanding Direction and was also chosen for broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service.[14]
Life after graduation
In 1985, Lee's NYU thesis drew attention from the William Morris Agency, the talent and literary agency that later represented Lee. At first, though, WMA found Lee few opportunities, and Lee remained unemployed for six years. During this time, he was a full-time house-husband, while his wife Jane Lin, a molecular biologist, was the sole breadwinner for the family of four. This arrangement put enormous pressure on the couple, but with Lin's support and understanding, Lee did not abandon his career in film but continued to generate new ideas from movies and performances. He also wrote several screenplays during this time.[15]
In 1990, Lee submitted two screenplays, Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet, to a competition sponsored by Government Information Office of R.O.C., and they came in first and second, respectively. The winning screenplays brought Lee to the attention of Hsu Li-kong (Chinese: 徐立功; pinyin: Xú Lìgōng), a recently promoted senior manager in a major studio who had a strong interest in Lee's unique style and freshness. Hsu, a first-time producer, invited Lee to direct Pushing Hands, a full-length feature that debuted in 1991.[citation needed]
Career
1991–1994: International films
The 'Father Knows Best' trilogy
Pushing Hands (1991) was a success in Taiwan both among critics and at the box office. It received eight nominations in the Golden Horse Film Festival, Taiwan's premier film festival. Inspired by the success, Hsu Li-kong collaborated with Lee in their second film, The Wedding Banquet (1993), which won the Golden Bear at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival[16] and was nominated as the Best Foreign Language Film[17] in both the Golden Globe and the Academy Awards. In all, this film collected eleven Taiwanese and international awards and made Lee a rising star. These first two movies were based on stories of Chinese Americans, and both were filmed in the US.
In 1994, Hsu invited Lee to return to Taiwan to make Eat Drink Man Woman, a film that depicts traditional values, modern relationships, and family conflicts in Taipei. The film was a box office hit and was critically acclaimed. For a second consecutive year, Lee's film received the Best Foreign Language Film nomination in both the Golden Globe and Academy Awards, as well as in the British Academy Awards (BAFTA)s. Eat Drink Man Woman won five awards in Taiwan and internationally, including the Best Director from Independent Spirit.
The three films show the Confucian family at risk and star the Taiwanese actor Sihung Lung to form what has been called Lee's "Father Knows Best" trilogy.[7]
In 1995, Lee directed ColumbiaTriStar's British classic Sense and Sensibility based on the Jane Austennovel of the same name. This made Lee a second-time winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, and won Best Adapted Screenplay for screenwriter Emma Thompson, who also starred in the movie alongside Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant and Kate Winslet. Sense and Sensibility also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama. Thompson has described the experience of working with Lee in his first English language film, noting how taken aback Lee was when the actors asked questions or provided suggestions, something Thompson notes as uncommon in Chinese culture. Once this disjuncture was bridged, Thompson remembered having "the most wonderful time because his notes were so brutal and funny."[18]Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised Lee's adaptation writing, "Mr. Lee is after something more broadly accessible, a sparkling, colorful and utterly contemporary comedy of manners. He achieves this so pleasantly that Sense and Sensibility matches the Austen-based Clueless for sheer fun".[19]
Lee made another film, the revisionist Western drama Ride with the Devil (1999), set during the American Civil War. The film which starred Tobey Maguire, Skeet Ulrich, and Jeffrey Wright received mixed reviews and was a box office bomb. Entertainment Weekly described it as "oddly unengaging" and the "waxy yellow buildup of earnest tastefulness seals off every character from our access. These Americans aren't action figures; they're collectible figurines."[21] For a time this interrupted Lee's unbroken popularity – from both general audiences and arthouse aficionados – since his first full-length movie. However, in the late 1990s and 2000s, The Ice Storm had high VHS and DVD sales and rentals and repeated screenings on cable television, which has increased the film's popularity among audiences.
In 1999, Hsu Li-kong, Lee's old partner and supporter, invited him to make a movie based on the traditional "wuxia" genre concerning the adventures of martial artists in ancient China. Excited about the opportunity to fulfill his childhood dream, Lee assembled a team from the United States, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Mainland China for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). The film starred Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh, and Zhang Ziyi and had surprising success worldwide. With Chinese dialogue and English subtitles, the film became the highest grossing foreign film in many countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom. Critics praised the film. Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter praised Lee writing, "for his first Chinese-language assignment since 1994’s Eat Drink Man Woman, Lee tries a little martial arts on for size – with jaw-droppingly exhilarating results". He added "A sweeping romantic epic with a strong feminist backbone, the thoroughly entertaining [film] also happens to boast a generous offering of seriously kick-ass action sequences that make The Matrix seem downright quaint by comparison."[22] The film was nominated in 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Director. It ended up winning Best Foreign Language Film and three technical awards.
In 2003, Lee returned to Hollywood to direct the superheroblockbusterHulk, his second big-budget movie after the disappointment of Ride with the Devil's restricted release. The film was produced by Universal Pictures in collaboration with Marvel Entertainment. It starred Eric Bana as Bruce Banner / The Hulk with supporting performances from Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliot and Nick Nolte. The film received mixed reviews while being a financial success, grossing over $245 million at the box office. After the setback, Lee considered retiring early, but his father encouraged him to continue making movies. Roger Ebert gave the film a positive review, writing, "Lee is trying to actually deal with the issues in the story of the Hulk, instead of simply cutting to brainless visual effects."
Lee took on a small-budget, low-profile independent film based on Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize-finalist short story, Brokeback Mountain. In a 2005 article[23] by Robert K. Elder, Lee was quoted as saying, "What do I know about gay ranch hands in Wyoming?" In spite of the director's distance from the subject at hand, Brokeback Mountain showcased Lee's skills in probing the depths of the human heart. The 2005 movie about the forbidden love between two Wyoming sheepherders immediately caught public attention and became a cultural phenomenon, initiating intense debates and becoming a box office hit.
The film was critically acclaimed at major international film festivals and won Lee numerous Best Director and Best Picture awards worldwide. Brokeback Mountain was the most acclaimed film of 2005, winning 71 awards and an additional 52 nominations. It won the Golden Lion (best film) award at the Venice International Film Festival and was named 2005's best film by the Los Angeles, New York, Boston, and London film critics. It also won best picture at the 2005 Broadcast Film Critics Association, Directors Guild of America, Writers Guild of America (Adapted Screenplay), Producers Guild of America and the Independent Spirit Awards as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama, with Lee winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Director. Brokeback Mountain also won Best Film and Best Director at the 2006 BAFTAs. It was nominated for a leading eight Oscars and was the front runner for Best Picture heading into March 5 ceremony, but lost out to Crash, a story about race relations in Los Angeles, in a controversial upset. He became the first non-white person to win the Best Director at the Academy Awards (which he won again for Life of Pi). In 2006, following his Best Director Oscar, Lee was bestowed the Order of Brilliant Star with Grand Cordon, the second highest civilian award, by the R.O.C. government.[24]
Lee in Taiwan in 2009
His next film was Lust, Caution, which was adapted from a novella by the Chinese author Eileen Chang. The story was written in 1950, and was loosely based on an actual event that took place in 1939–1940 in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, China, during World War II. Lust, Caution was distributed by Focus Features and premiered at international film festivals in the summer and early fall of 2007. In the U.S., the movie received a NC-17 rating (no children 17 and under admitted) from the MPAA mainly due to several strongly explicit sex scenes. This was a challenge to the film's distribution because many theater chains in the United States refuse to show NC-17 films. The director and film studio decided not to appeal the decision. Lee removed 9 minutes from the film to make the content suitable for minor audiences in order to be permitted to show Lust, Caution in mainland China.[25]
Lust, Caution captured the Golden Lion from the 2007 Biennale Venice Film Festival, making Lee the winner of the highest prize for the second time in three years (Lee is one of only four filmmakers to have won the Golden Lion twice). When Lust, Caution was played in Lee's native Taiwan in its original full-length edition, it was very well received.[citation needed] Staying in Taiwan to promote the film and to participate in a traditional holiday, Lee got emotional[citation needed] when he found that his work was widely applauded by fellow Taiwanese. Lee admitted that he had low expectations for this film from the U.S. audience since "its pace, its film language;– it's all very Chinese."[26] The film was submitted by Taiwan for consideration in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Academy Awards, but the Academy ruled that an insufficient number of Taiwanese nationals had participated in the production, thus disqualifying it from further consideration; it was not nominated for any other category.
Lee was chosen to be president of the jury for the 2009 Venice Film Festival.[27] Lee's next film after 2009's Taking Woodstock was Life of Pi, which was adapted from the novel of the same name written by Yann Martel. The story was a retrospective first-person narrative from Pi, a then 16-year-old boy from India, who is the only human to survive the sinking of a freighter on the way from India to Canada. He finds himself on a lifeboat with an orangutan, a hyena, a wounded zebra and a Bengal tiger.[28] During this unlikely journey, young Pi questions his belief in God and the meaning of life. The novel was once considered impossible to make into a movie, but Lee persuaded 20th Century Fox to invest $120 million and heavily relied on 3D special effects in post-production. Unlike most other sci-fi precedents, Lee explores the artistic horizon of applying 3D effects and pushes the boundary of how this technology can serve the movie's artistic vision. The movie made its commercial premiere during Thanksgiving weekend of 2012 in the US and worldwide, and became a critical and box office success. In January 2013, Life of Pi earned 11 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Visual Effects.[29] He went on to win the Academy Award for Best Director.
2013–present: Career fluctuations
In 2013, he was selected as a member of the main competition jury at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.[30] In March 2013, it was announced that Lee would direct a television pilot for the drama series Tyrant, created by Gideon Raff and developed by Howard Gordon and Craig Wright. Production was scheduled for the summer of 2013 for the FX series.[31] However, Lee decided to quit the project to take a break from his hectic schedule.[32]
In April 2017, Lee began discussions with Skydance Media to helm an action thriller film, Gemini Man, that follows a senior DIA official being hunted by a young clone of himself right as he is about to retire from the agency.[34]Will Smith was cast in the lead role.[35] In January 2018, Clive Owen and Mary Elizabeth Winstead had been cast as the antagonist and female lead respectively. The film was released on October 11, 2019 to negative reviews and flopped at the box office. Alissa Wilkinson of Vox wrote, "If Gemini Man is the future of big-budget filmmaking, I hope someone in Hollywood is getting worried."[36] Peter Debruge of Variety wrote, "it was the script that never lived up to the promise of its premise."[37]
Upcoming projects
In 2013, Lee began development on a film dramatising Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali's heavyweight title fight, known as the Thrilla in Manila. The film was to be produced by Universal with a screenplay written by Peter Morgan, but Lee later put it on hold in 2014 in order to make Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.[38][39][40] In December 2015, it was announced that the project, tentatively titled Thrilla in Manila, now with Studio 8, would be his next film after Gemini Man.[41]David Oyelowo and Ray Fisher were reportedly Lee's top choices for the leading roles of Frazier and Ali, respectively, and he hoped to film in 3D.[42]
Lee announced in November 2022 that he is working on a biopic on the life of Bruce Lee starring his son, Mason Lee.[43]
Lee has been involved in the process of filmmaking in various capacities, though the highlight of his career and legacy is his directorial work. The following are Lee's various credits.
In 2003, Lee was ranked 27th in The Guardian's 40 best directors.[6] In August 2007, Lee was named the 41st greatest director of all time in a poll by Total Film magazine.[51] Lee has also received awards from the French Government including becoming a Knight of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2012).[52] and a Knight of the French Legion of Honor (2021)[53][54] In 2020 he received a BAFTA Fellowship for his Outstanding Contributions to British Cinema.
On November 30, 2021, Lee received the Presidential Culture Award in the arts and culture category from Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen.[56] Lee received Japan's Praemium Imperiale in 2024.[57]
^Mychael Danna was originally hired to score Hulk, but he was removed from the project, apparently at the request of the studio, and another composer completed the final score. Ang Lee spoke publicly about this in 2012 at a director's roundtable, calling it the moment he regretted most in his career. Danna subsequently received his first Oscar nomination and went on to win that award for scoring Life of Pi, his first reunion with Lee since that time.
^王, 篤若 (July 29, 2007). "李安對威尼斯不滿：「色戒」代表中華民國". tw.aboluowang.com (in Chinese). Retrieved March 9, 2021. 李良山 (李安的特助)表示: "「色，戒」雖有美國資金，並是在大陸拍攝，但歐洲三大影展坎城、威尼斯、與柏林都是依導演的國籍來確定這部電影的出處，而李安至今仍是拿中華民國護照，從未申請入美國籍，所以「色，戒」當然是屬於中華民國、台灣的電影"... 據了解，李安旅美多年只持有美國綠卡，並未申請入美國籍 [...Ang Lee's personal assistant stated:"Though Lust, Caution had received fund from the US, and been filming in mainland China, but three major film festivals in Europe including Cannes, Venice, and Berlin, all decide the origin of the cinemas according to the nationality of the film director. As of now, Ang Lee still holds ROC passport, and he never apply to naturalize himself as American citizen. Surely Lust, Caution is originated in Taiwan"... It was learned that Ang Lee has been a US permanent resident for years without a citizenship by naturalization]
^Williams, Sarah (February 20, 2013). "'Life of Pi's Ang Lee Conquers Anti-Asian Bias". Voice of America. Retrieved February 20, 2013. Like many Asian-Americans in Hollywood's film industry, Chinese-born American film director Ang Lee struggled for acceptance early in his career.
^Corliss, Richard (November 20, 2012). "Ang Lee's Life of Pi: Storm and Fang, Water and Wonder". Time. Retrieved November 20, 2012. The Chinese-born American director mastered the nuances of 19th-century English manners in Sense and Sensibility, set martial-artist adversaries to dancing on tree tops in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and sold the mainstream audience on the love story of two cowboys in Brokeback Mountain.
^Dilley, Whitney Crothers (December 23, 2014). The Cinema of Ang Lee: The Other Side of the Screen 2nd Edition. Wallflower Press. p. 29. ISBN978-0231167734.
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