Choy: Hello everyone, I speak Chinese, Korean, Shanghainese and Cantonese. Today’s topic is Chinese film and Chinese confidence. I would like to thank all the unsung heroes who organized today’s event so well. I’ve known Ang Lee for about 30 years now. He hasn’t changed a bit, only thing that has changed is his hair which is now white. He is innocent, honest, diligent, and so bad-assly creative. Zhang Yimou, on the other hand, is the most successful film director in China. He’s helmed more work than Ang Lee, of course, and has contributed a lot to the Chinese film industry. It is definitely worthwhile that I have invited these two master filmmakers here today, so please applause for me. (Laugh) Nah, just kidding.
Ang Lee’s films are rather strange, perhaps because he’s familiar with both eastern and western culture. Zhang Yimou constantly changes and challenges himself, and he’s very experimental. They both have my respect.
Now please welcome Ang Lee and Zhang!
(Introducing video screening)
Choy: Lee, so we just watched Zhang’s latest film, Coming Home. Which part impressed you the most, and why?
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GsKijZmtlM[/youtube]
Lee: I think it’s the part that near the end, where the film achieved a certain richness. It tells a story so slowly and smoothly. It doesn’t have those dazzling tableaus we just saw. It’s very tranquil, especially when Zhang used a 4K camera to shoot the film, making it very down to earth. The lighting in the film is even plainer than our lighting on this stage today. It’s very delicate and so is the acting. I don’t know whether it’ll be too heavy for most audiences but it wasn’t for me. It has its own beauty, but it’s very subtle. The power of this kind of film usually won’t emerge until the end of the work. I think it touches the motif of memories, and the concept between repression and freedom. It’s very dialectic. There are several shots near the end that impressed me the most. In my opinion it’s not only applicable to those figures at that time and the characters in the film, but all of us. As long as you are a human, you’ll experience those repressions and helpless situations. There’s also the subject of our existence. It’s a very good existentialist film, which deals with topics such as “ what is memory?” when people and society are constantly changing. “What is the nature of our memories and impressions?” I was really touched by the power expressed by several shots near the end.
Choy: Do you agree? Zhang, I’ve watched 99.9% of your work. But after viewing this film, I feel like you invented a whole new concept. Why did you pick this story?
Zhang: Firstly, I would like to thank Lee for his compliment. I was touched by Geling Yan’s novel, so I bought the movie rights. And I changed a lot of it, because great parts of novels cannot be adapted into films. I turned the end of the novel into the beginning of my film. It’s been really tough. We spent two and a half to three years rewriting the screenplay.
Choy: It’s been years since you guys saw each other last time?
Lee: It’s been years.
Zhang: It was probably about 2007 in Venice [when Lee previewed Lust, Caution] that we last saw each other.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=917zu3BzcB0[/youtube]Lee: Thanks to him, he’s always the judge at the film festivals I go to.
Choy: Helping each other is a part of Chinese tradition. You both haven’t seen the other in a long time. You must have lots of questions that you want to ask Lee, while (to Lee) you must feel the same. Who’s first? Who’s braver?
Lee: Let the timid one go first.
Choy: Alright.
Lee: Regarding Zhang’s films, I think all film fans, including myself, want to ask why you used the color red so brilliantly in your early films? Being not so bright, red is the most difficult color to deal with in film production. How did you use the color red so well? What gave you this motivation? Also, in this film, we cannot see red anymore. It’s more like the color we see here today. After all the blockbusters you made in China, you now return to such a film that deals with memories and repressions in such a literal fashion with plain shooting. What has changed?
I’m not challenging you; I just want to hear your thoughts.
Zhang: Actually, that was my intention. I think it’s very similar to Lee’s early films such as Pushing Hands and Eat Drink Man Woman.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMpKszSqxkY[/youtube] [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yicBx-okC3k[/youtube]Lee: That’s because the budgets were so low back then.
Zhang: Well in my case, I am now doing it that way with big budgets. I just feel the story itself needs to be told slowly and brought back to basics. I want to pay attention to humanity by restoring people’s personal stories. I also wish to turn all historical memories into details that are slowly and carefully seeped into the storyline. Because of this, I didn’t use those bold formal devices. However, it’s really challenging for me. You have to be diligent. I’m quite different from Lee, he’s been like that for years. It’s so natural for him. I directed films like Red Sorghum, therefore I’m actually trying to be the opposite of the old me, so I have to control myself. In fact, I often thought about Lee while I was shooting the film. I wondered, “would this work?” Lee’s early films all fall in this category. Coming Home is also like those films. The story returns to family. It is through the family that the film reviews and examines history. Originally in the novel there are many family members, but in my film there are only three of them. I wanted to deal with a big topic by examining less people in a rather subtle fashion. The shooting lasted for about 70 days, and every single day was a challenge for me. For my team and I, we go way back. So during the shooting, my DP [director of photography] always gave me suggestions. He would say, “Hey director, the shot would be awesome if we shot it in this way.” He meant a pan, or something like that. They could be very expressionistic and sentimental, which was actually really good while we had discussions on set. Then I was tempted to do things might be very moving and vivid. Yet I always reminded myself that it couldn’t be shot like that. I had to stick with the direction, which always went against myself. It’s really unforgettable.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=415CReI3zps[/youtube]Choy: You should ask Director Lee.
Zhang: I have been asking him various questions just now. Currently, I am working on a film for Hollywood. Ang Lee is the best Chinese director I know who works with ease back and forth in East and West, which is extremely rare in the world. I am fortunate to know such a great director I can ask questions about working in Hollywood, such as whom I should ask for help and how I can resolve problems. Ang Lee gives me a bunch of advice, but now since I am required to ask a question face to face, I would like to know how to put certain Chinese perspectives and norms into films? It is very easy to say, just like what Ang Lee has told me before, –“To be yourself”. But it’s not that simple especially when you’re asked to make a film geared towards an international audience. Some Chinese notions or details may not be understood by the world. So if you have been asked to make a film facing world-wide audiences, and you want to be understood by them, what specifically can you do?
Lee: For me, there are two layers. First is a general layer, which is your skill. This is how film grammar is constructed in the United States, which you [Zhang] should be aware of. You don’t have problems with this. Even though you do not work in Hollywood, you have seen enough films produced by them to know their common vocabulary. There is a basic film grammar that we are all experienced with. However, when the U.S. establishes a film (context) like this, there is also a cultural gap being built. It is difficult to contend with and one needs to calculate all the facets involved. What I mean is, the whole world will be watching American films, on the surface the film should be accessible and aimed to satisfy audiences. This is same as in China in terms of two layers—one concerns satisfying audiences, officers and bosses, which means you need to make the basic film context understandable. However, what can be added into it depends on the filmmaker. Whoever feels connecting to this idea will deeply devote himself to the film.
In my opinion when you’re making a blockbuster film, these are the two fundamentals of it. Superficial parts of a film should be included in order to sell, to make it a hit. You spend so much money to shoot a film because most people coming into the theatre don’t even know what they should watch. I enjoy a lot of my films, but when there’s bad reception by angry viewers, that’s not acceptable.
Film has its own way. That’s your real talent and effort to make sense of film methodology and basic context. It’s a process to make the actual surface layer understandable. As for me, experience has come with age. At the time when I shot The Life of Pi，I was relatively mature. But although I tried to make two layers work, it was still too hard to satisfy the surface facet. This is because the ending was very difficult and cruel. It took me a lot of effort to beautify the ending part so that even young viewers would be happy to see it. The real theme was beneath however, and I think others had this feeling as well. You are an expert on both left hand and right hand, so I don’t think you need my advice. As for norms in the U.S., you need to think about the conventional taste and expectations people have while watching American films, but it doesn’t matter that you’re a Mainland China filmmaker. The premiere film people in Hollywood still need to listen to you and work under your power, so there is nothing you need to worry about.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZEZ35Fhvuc[/youtube]To Be Continued
Main image: Photo of Zhang Yimou and Ang Lee at a press conference at Cooper Union this March. Photo credit: Image courtesy of China Daily.
Translated by Bo An, with partial translation by Qianda Rao. Proofread by Zsuzska Beswick.
Bo An holds an MA Candidate in Cinema Studies in Tisch School of the Arts of New York University. She is also a member of China Hollywood Society and China-US Filmmaker Guild. She is now working with ChinaLion Production in LA.