Friday, October 19, 2007

Ang Lee on "Lust, Caution"

Well, didn't expect this film to have aroused so many controversies, though almost everyone is talking ONLY about its sex scenes and from the following phone interview by Newsweek, it's perfectly sure that Ang had calculated that result. Right, "they usually are functional"...

What appealed to you about Chang's story?
Very little Chinese literature describes sex. It is one of the few daring ones. It tells us what women get from sex. It scared me for quite a few years, but I decided to do it.

How was making "Brokeback Mountain" different from "Lust, Caution"?
The material if "Brokeback Mountain" is very far away from me. I mean, American gay cowboy, that's as far as you get from my personal experience. I was able to make art out of it. Physically I was very relaxed making it. But with "Lust, Caution", the materials, the characters and the textures are very close to me. It's very intense physically. It reminds me where my culture comes from.

What was the hardest part?
Well, obviously, the sex scenes. You can't just take it easy because people make pornographic films. It's very difficult physically and psychologically. People think you have the framework, and then you decide how deep you want to go with the sex scenes because they usually are functional. But to me how they landed decided how the movie would unfold. So I actually shot them relatively early. Then they served as the anchors to decide how to craft the second half of the story.

Philosophically, what is filmmaking to you?
It's the way I discover myself and understand the world.


(adapted from Newsweek Oct 15, 2007)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I find it hard to digest the fact that he said that the sex scenes are the anchor for the whole story. Well , but again, sex sells as always.

黃玲 Ling Wg said...

that's what other critics are questioning but afterall, his target is not locals...imagine what foreigners was thinking when they saw a 'Chinese' film like that? even Ang was saying that Cheng's story scared him for quite a while because 'very little Chinese literature describes sex'. this film could only be extraordinary within a Chinese context.

MoonChild said...

我在寫中文評說時都有你評畫評時感覺..."
不知是幸or不幸,我早初所想的跟我最後寫出來的完全是二回事,因為在交那天(今天)的早上突然從原文看到另一番境象,於是越寫越根草時不同=v=" 因為機乎是重寫的關係,走了堂,又miss了seminar""" 完全messy的一天!!!!
不暢快的一天!

Miaotina said...

我都係啊Moonchild,我覺得這是一個思考的層次,當我們很快想到某一論點和論據時,就會怕有自己寫得太膚淺, 然後我們就會越掘越深,進入另一層的思考模式,之後又再質疑自己的論點,週而復始,即使在睡夢中我們都在思考,起來後甚至想得太入神,忘了時間,忘了自己,如此下去,就像無間道的折磨,幸好的是有死線(Deadline)停止我們無止境的思考下去...

黃玲 Ling Wg said...

super agree!!! i just finished my writing an hour before its class submission but still i thought my stuff was so inconvincing and incomprehensive!!! again, may God bless this piece of essay -_-"