Shine With Grace

Director Lee Ang has just won the Golden Lion (Best Film) Award for the second time in this year’s Venice Film Festival with his new film Lust, Caution (Interested to know more about the film?  Read my recent post on Lust, Caution).  Two years ago, his controversial homosexual film Brokeback Mountain won him the same award.  

It has been very tough   

Undoubtedly, Director Lee is exceptionally talented.  Nevertheless, his journey has been tough.   At the very beginning of his career, his agency has found him few opportunities and therefore Lee has been a full-time “house-husband” for six years, with his wife being the sole bread-winner of the family.  The arrangement bought the young couple much pressure and embarrassment. 

Thanks to the support and understanding of his wife and family, Lee persisted and continued to write screenplays during the hard time.  In 1990, Lee’s screenplays Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet won him the chance to become a director.  His first film Pushing Hands quickly became a smash hit in Taiwan cinema.  Lee then continued to direct award winning films including The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman, which depicted the interactions between tradition and modernity in a very delicate manner.

Successes

The Wedding Banquet made in 1993 won the Golden Bear Award in the Berlin Film Festival and was nominated as the Best Foreign Language Film in both the Golden Globe and the Academy Awards.

Lee was then invited to direct in Hollywood.  His British classical Sense and Sensibility (1995),  apart from being a box office hit, also won him more awards.   In 2000, Lee returned to the Chinese cinema and made the traditional Chinese martial art genre,  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which was a success worldwide. The film finally won the Best Foreign Language Film Award in the Academy.

Oppotunities and the unexpected failure

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won Lee great successes, but also almost caused his ultimate failure.  In 2003, Lee was invited back to the Hollywood to direct the Hulk, based on the famous comic.  Funded with an exceptionally big budget, the film was filled with expensive computer graphics and special effects.  Nevertheless, as all these elements were not the strength of Lee, the end product disappointed both the audiences and the critics.   Lee almost lost all his confidence in film-making after the failure and considered to retire early.

Climbing the mountains

When Lee was young, his father kept urged him to find a steady job instead of wasting time in pursing his dreams.  Nevertheless, when Lee confessed to his father his intention to quit after the Hulk failure, his father encouraged him to persist and continue to fight.  Before long, his father passed away. 

Three months later, Lee reclaimed his confidence in directing and determined to return to the basics and make an independent film on a small budget, which focused on investigating the depth of the human heart.   The controversial homosexual movie Brokeback Mountain (2005) was a box office hit and won Lee numerous best director and best film awards from film festivals worldwide. 

This year, Lee made the even more controversial film Lust, Caution.  The director confessed that this was the most difficult film he has direct so far and he has almost collapsed emotionally when handling the erotic scenes that were going test the very limits of the most open-minded audiences.  The hardship of Lee and the crew has proved to be worthwhile.  Lust, Caution has just won the Golden Lion Award in the Venice Film Festival.

Good luck?  Bad luck?  It’s not necessarily so…

The Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a huge success.  Nevertheless, it also almost ruined the director’s career as it bought about an opportunity that did not go well with Lee’s talent.   The Hulk was a big failure.  Nevertheless, it also worked like a magic mirror which allowed the director to rediscover his strength.  Without it Lee may never have directed the Brokeback Mountain and Lust, Caution, which examined the struggles and dilemmas of the human heart at such depth.  We can fail a task, but as long as we don’t fail as a person, we can always come back and shine even brighter, just like Lee.

Related posts:

• “What Is It You Were Unwilling To Do” Vs The Next Level - Inspired By The Interview of Tony Leung of Lust, Caution
• Say No To Say Yes (Why Setting Priorities Is Essential For Attaining Your Goal) 
• I Didn’t Know How To Get There When Started 
• How Lucky Are You? - We Make Our Own Luck 
• A Half Conscious Life? 
• How To Discover My Talent? 

Popularity: 9% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!