Director Lee, combines philosophies and family values in films

By KATHRYN GRAHAM
Collegian Staff Writer

Graduating from the prestigious Tisch School of the Arts program at New York University might convince most film majors to stick around the Big Apple to chase their fame and fortune.

Not Ang Lee.

Lee, who directed The Wedding Banquet and Sense and Sensibility, established himself with small foreign films in his homeland of Taiwan before finding success in the United States with 1994's Eat Drink Man Woman.

Though Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm pushed him into the spotlight, Lee began his career with 1992's Pushing Hands. With this movie and his two subsequent efforts, The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman, Lee developed his signature theme -- the conflict between ancient Asian ideals and the Westernization of the Far East. Lee's films revel in the idea of both Western and Eastern tradition and how it affects all types of families.

Yet with his American directorial debut of Sense and Sensibility, Lee, along with Emma Thompson's Academy Award-winning script, moved away from the norm. Lee brought the emotional movie to the screen without so much as a mention of his usual Eastern themes.

With his latest project, Ride With the Devil, which will feature songstress Jewel's acting debut, Lee returns his focus to tradition during mid 19th-century America.

The following are three of Lee's films that accurately demonstrate his penchant for displaying the trials associated with family relationships.

-- Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) -- This award-winning foreign film is about a chef and the loss of his most treasured body part: his taste buds. The main theme centers around how one family deals with a crisis.

Each of the chef's daughters is going through her own crisis, and each one unintentionally ignores her father's huge feeling of loss. Throughout the film, Lee applies the belief that expressing emotion within a family constitutes vulnerability, aptly demonstrated by each actor.

"Eat Drink Man Woman is a film about complex characters and finding the human spirit in all things," said Pat Trimble, instructor of integrative arts.

In this movie, Lee sticks to his characteristically unflamboyant style and lets the camera portray the emotions without using any special effects. In creating a touching movie, Lee also found financial success with this 1994 release.

-- Sense and Sensibility (1995) -- Jane Austen garnered plenty of popularity in 1995 with the release of big-screen versions of her works Persuasion, Emma and Sense and Sensibility. The only Austen-inspired movie to score a screenwriting Academy Award, Sense and Sensibility tells the story of the two eldest Dashwood sisters and their quest for love and commitment. Marianne Dashwood (Titanic darling Kate Winslet) looks for fun and excitement in 19th-century England while her straight-and-narrow sister, Elinor (Thompson), struggles to rein in her feelings.

Because of the way Lee centers the camera on the characters' faces, he doesn't need much dialogue -- he makes the Dashwoods' angst and the frustration of their beleaguered suitors obvious.

"In Sense and Sensibility, the social code wants you to be rational and good, but the characters want to be bad," Lee said in a recent interview.

-- The Ice Storm (1997) -- The ‘70s were known as a turbulent time in American history, yet in Lee's The Ice Storm, they are shown to be one of the most depressing and chilly times within one family's suburban life.

The Hood family looks ideal on the outside, with Kevin Kline and Joan Allen playing the perfect parents and Christina Ricci and Tobey Maguire portraying their children. Unfortunately, this family's infrastructure begins to deteriorate as Kline engages in an affair with the neighbor's sultry wife (Sigourney Weaver) and then finds out his promiscuous daughter is experimenting with sex with both of the neighbor's boys (one of them being teen star Elijah Wood).

For the first time, Lee relies on a few special effects to underscore the drama. A dangerous ice storm (hence the title) becomes the climax through which the Hoods confront their problems.

In this movie, there are several standout scenes, mostly taking place during the ice storm. They include Kline's realization that his daughter is a sexually active teenager and Maguire's attempted confession of love to the object of his desire (played by Dawson's Creek ingenue Katie Holmes).