Moving 'Mountain'
Ang Lee's latest surprise turn extends his tradition of convention-challenging romances
By Andy Klein
On paper, Brokeback Mountain - which won the grand prize at the Venice Film Festival - sounds like the toughest sell of the season: Ang Lee's new drama covers 20 years in the lives of two modern-day cowboys. Two modern-day cowboys who just happen to be in love with each other.
Now, male bonding is a staple of Westerns, but not bonding that tight. And, while lots of Westerns have homoerotic subtexts, there's nothing sub in the text of this one. Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger play Jack and Ennis, two ranch hands who discover their passion while tending sheep on an isolated Wyoming mountain. They split up at the end of the season, and Ennis heads for Texas; both get married and start raising families but are haunted by their lost love (specifically) and their attraction to men (in general). Much of the film crosscuts between them, during their four years of separation and then during the next decade and a half, after they start getting together for periodic "fishing trips."
This unusual project is hardly the first big surprise in Lee's career. After three increasingly successful low-budget comedies - Pushing Hands (1992), The Wedding Banquet (1993), and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) - exploring Taiwanese culture (rubbing up against America in the first two), he made a giant leap in time and space to direct Emma Thompson's adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1995).
During a recent interview, I confess to Lee that my first reaction when the Austen film was announced was surprise and that it was a few minutes before I realized how this story of romantic yearnings set against societal conventions had similarities to his previous works.
"I was surprised myself when I received the script," he tells me. "It took me 20 minutes. I said, 'Why did they give it to me?' I was told they were considering me based on seeing Wedding Banquet ... then the more of it I read, about halfway through, I got it. That's what I'd been doing with my Chinese films, except I couldn't do it as accurately as Jane Austen."
He faced obvious cultural obstacles - the dry sense of humor, the British ways, and the language. But a more daunting issue for Lee was the size of the production. It was the first time he had helmed a major-league production, with top-of-the-line British cast and crew.
After that film's great reception, he changed pace twice again with the contemporary suburban comedy/drama The Ice Storm (1997) and the Civil War drama Ride with the Devil (1999). But his most surprising release was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), the hugely acclaimed and popular martial-arts film with Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, and Zhang Ziyi. Lee insisted that it be released in Chinese with English subtitles, which was predicted to cramp the box office. Nonetheless, it became by far the highest grossing subtitled release in U.S. history, taking more than double the gross of the previous record-holder, Roberto Benigni's 1998 Life Is Beautiful.
While Crouching Tiger might not seem like such a strange film for a Chinese director, it was in fact considered daring for an "art house" director, known for small social comedies, to take on a big action production. "I grew up watching martial-arts films, and for years it was my passion to make one," Lee says. "But, unless you grew up working at Shaw Brothers [the dominant Hong Kong studio for at least two decades] or being a stunt man like Jackie Chan, paying your dues and learning about the craft, you don't get to have control over the martial-arts scenes. They directed them for you, even cut it for you. So you have nothing to say: You tell them who wins and who loses, and if it's three minutes or five minutes.
"So it took me a long while to get respected enough as a filmmaker that I could work with a master action choreographer like Yuen Wo Ping," Lee continues, "and know that he'll think about what I say."
His next film was the mega-budgeted adaptation of The Hulk, which was less well received critically. It was the first of Lee's films that struck me as a real misfire, and I assumed it was an unsatisfying experience, with studio interference. "No," he says. "No one interfered with me. In fact, it was really satisfying in the making. Except, because it was a bigger movie, I had to make some decisions that hurt some of the pals I work with, which is really against my nature. And at the end, dealing with the studio's nervousness and going along with all the merchandising was painful."
He then really shocks me by adding, "That was probably my most personal film. It got deep into my psychology, into my subconscious ... . It was in some ways torturous." It went very deep for Lee. "It was about aggression; in my mind, it wasn't supposed to be pleasant to watch, but rather to provoke anger," he says. "I see a lot of Hulk in my friends' faces and see the Hulk in me - things that I was not aware I had in me. It was a very meaningful, special experience, and I don't have one bit of regret."
Lee estimates that Brokeback Mountain - adapted from Annie Proulx's 1997 New Yorker story - cost a twelfth or fifteenth as much as The Hulk. Diana Ossana, Larry McMurtry's writing partner, read it when it first came out and cried. She took it to McMurtry, and they bought the rights. For years, she tried to get the project off the ground. "At different times," Lee says, "a lot of directors were attached to it. I got my hands on it four years ago, and I passed on it, even though I was deeply moved, because I was preparing to do The Hulk. So I was very happy when, after The Hulk, I found out it was still available."
Compared to his other films, Brokeback Mountain is pretty downbeat. The characters in Sense and Sensibility and his other movies about people struggling against the social order are a lot more successful at it than Jack and Ennis, who do not have enviable lives overall. "That's very Chinese," he remarks. "Nothing stands still, and you'll always end up disappointed when you try to do something ... unless you die a really heroic death."
It's also his least talky film. "It's a nonverbal culture," he says. "It's the most stoic movie I've made, by far. I inherited that from Annie Proulx. As the characters go on with their lives, the pace may be a little slower than in most films, but hopefully it grows on you, so that, later, you don't know what hit you. That's the way it was when I read the short story and it hit me really hard, so that's what I was aiming for."
I cautiously broach the question of whether the actors felt awkward in the lovemaking scenes. (Part of the caution is that I have no clue which way they lean in real life.) "I think they're straight, so I expected them to be more uncomfortable," Lee says. "But they were very professional. I thought the best way to direct them there was not a lot of talk, but just to tell them what had to be done, and to go ahead and do it. I wanted to get the performance while they were fresh, and to use the obstacle to get a freshness. In sex scenes, you rarely see the private side, but I think there are a couple moments here where you do. I remember thinking the actors were pretty brave. But I didn't coax them or do anything. I didn't know how they felt internally, but that was their problem; they had to sort it out and deliver."
Published: 11/23/2005
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