The Fellowship – Ang Lee

William Callan for Contour by Getty Images

THE FELLOWSHIP: ANG LEE

WORDS BY Neil Smith

The latest deserving recipient of BAFTA’s highest honour is no stranger to the organisation or its awards. The winner of two BAFTAs for achievement in Direction, one Best Film award and another for Film Not in the English Language, writer-directorproducer Ang Lee was also honoured with the John Schlesinger Britannia Award for Excellence in Directing in 2016. Add a Children’s BAFTA for Feature Film and six additional nominations, and you have a filmmaker who has been a regular presence at BAFTA’s ceremonies for more than 25 years.

Despite this, Lee expresses both surprise and humility at the prospect of becoming BAFTA’s newest recipient of the Fellowship. “What can I say? It’s a tremendous honour,” he says down the line from Taipei. “I am so flattered and humbled. It’s thrilling to be with such giants as Hitchcock, Bergman, Fellini and Kubrick. I’ve loved movies since I was a kid and they were my idols.”

Born in southern Taiwan in 1954, Lee grew up on a diet of musical melodrama and martial arts pictures that stoked a passion for entertainment and spectacle. It was only later that he discovered art cinema, a revelation that took him to the USA and New York University’s highly prestigious film school. It was there he made his first short films, among them the award-winning Fine Line (1984). He also collaborated with fellow hopeful Spike Lee, serving as first assistant director on his thesis film. “He was a year ahead of me, and we helped each other out,” Lee recalls. “He struck me as a great writer and he shot very fast.”

Success did not come immediately for Lee upon graduation, leading to a lean few years for him, his wife Jane and their two young sons. But the tide turned in 1990 when he submitted two screenplays to a Taiwanese screenwriting competition, finishing first and second place.

“IT’S THRILLING TO BE WITH SUCH GIANTS AS HITCHCOCK, BERGMAN, FELLINI AND KUBRICK. THEY ARE MY IDOLS.”

The works that came out of them, 1991’s Pushing Hands and 1993’s The Wedding Banquet, touched audiences around the world with their portraits of intergenerational conflict among immigrant families in the West. Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), meanwhile, caught the attention of BAFTA, receiving a nomination in 1995 for Film Not in the English Language. “I started out making mainstream movies for a Taiwanese audience, in America,” Lee explains. “They had to be specific but also universal. Being foreign is a big thing for me. I’m always looking from outside in and inside out.”

None of the films in Lee’s commonly called ‘Father Knows Best’ trilogy suggested an affinity with literary IS A BIG adaptation. Yet, he nevertheless proved an inspired choice to direct the 1995 version of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, working with Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant and Kate Winslet to construct an exquisite comedy of manners with a powerfully emotional undertow. “It was very intimidating to make my first film in English, and first period piece, with an English cast and crew,” Lee concedes. “But it was a movie about repression, which I understand very much as an Asian director.”

Two further adaptations, 1997’s The Ice Storm and 1999’s Ride with the Devil, again showed his ability to turn pre-existing material into resonant drama across a range of different genres.

Having made his name in Hollywood, Lee promptly headed off to China to make Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), a thrilling homage to the classic wuxia genre. “I wasn’t a martial arts director but I was allowed to give it a try,” he says. “I used to joke it was both my childhood fantasy and my midlife crisis.” Another left turn ensued in 2003 when Lee directed Hulk, an audacious reappraisal of the Marvel superhero. “I thought I was doing a pulpy psychodrama with lots of visual innovations,” he expounds. “The result was not what I expected, but it was still a great learning experience.”

With his BAFTA for Direction of Brokeback Mountain in 2006

2006 Film Awards by BAFTA/Greg Williams

Lee wrong-footed audiences once again with 2005’s Brokeback Mountain, an adaptation of Annie Proulx’s story about cowboys in Wyoming who clandestinely fall in love. Delicately crafted, brilliantly acted and almost unbearably sad, the film saw Lee crowned best director at both the BAFTAs and the Oscars. “I didn’t know what I had in common with gay cowboys but it was a great love story,” Lee reflects. “I was also exhausted after Hulk, so it was a very nurturing experience that gave me back my love of moviemaking.”

Returning to China for Lust, Caution (2007), Lee treated audiences to a heady saga of World War II espionage before decamping to the US for the sweetly nostalgic Taking Woodstock (2009). Life of Pi (2012), meanwhile, saw him deploy the most sophisticated visual effects available to bring Yann Martel’s tale of a young Indian sharing a lifeboat with a tiger to stunning, three-dimensional life. (“Water, a kid, animation, 3D – it was all the most difficult elements mashed together,” Lee chuckles.)

Lee’s fascination with cutting-edge technology was on display again in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016), a war hero’s rite of passage he shot using an extra high frame rate. Similarly, in 2019’s Gemini Man, he used de-ageing motion capture to pit Will Smith against his cloned younger self.

“THE CHALLENGE IS ALWAYS TO TRY SOMETHING NEW. I WOULD LIKE MY CAREER TO BE LIKE A NEVER-ENDING FILM SCHOOL.”

“In some ways you want to try the newest thing to go back to the oldest pleasure,” says Lee of the way he uses technology. “The challenge is always to try something new. I would like my career to be like a never-ending film school and I want to try everything. I’m curious so I take the road I think the material requires.”

Like many people in the industry, the global lockdown has afforded Lee some time to take stock. It has also given him an opportunity to reflect on the director’s role, and the advice he might offer to budding filmmakers. “I’d tell them to be fresh, be honest and to keep their curiosity,” he muses. “There is something about the medium that dares us to be honest and touch the truth. It may sound philosophical but honesty is more important than craft. So keep yourself fresh, keep exploring and open your heart to share.”

Neil Smith is a journalist, critic and contributing editor of Total Film