TSPDT

Key Production Countries: USA, Taiwan, China, UK
Key Genres: Drama, Comedy Drama, Period Film, Romance, Adventure, Family Drama, Domestic Comedy, Gay & Lesbian Films, Romantic Drama, Science Fiction, Action, Thriller
Key Collaborators: Tim Squyres (Editor), James Schamus (Screenwriter/Producer), Sihung Lung (Leading Actor), Mychael Danna (Composer), Wang Hui-Ling (Screenwriter), Ted Hope (Producer), Frederick Elmes (Cinematographer), Jong Lin (Cinematographer), Mark Friedberg (Production Designer), Winston Chao (Leading Actor), Hsu Li-Kong (Producer), William Kong (Producer)

"In the space of only five years, beginning in 1991, and on the strength of four films, Taiwanese film director Ang Lee grew from art-house phenomenon to major studio director. Lee’s first three films, a sort of trilogy of charming family dramas, established him as a talented director with a particularly deft hand at creating character driven studies of human nature… It is this unique ability acutely to grasp the essence of multicultural customs, combined with his professional polish, that distinguishes Lee from his peers. After the success of Sense and Sensibility, he entered the Hollywood mainstream with The Ice Storm, released in 1997, and examining with awesome accuracy a particular social stratum in American society." - Kevin Hillstrom (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 2000)

"A director of meticulously crafted dramas, his films analyse the role of the family and personal relationships in terms of generational, cultural and sexual difference. Ranging from Asia to America and spanning two centuries, his work is both intelligent and heartfelt." - Ian Haydn Smith (Contemporary North American Film Directors, 2002)

"Yes, Ang Lee is at least as good as "everyone" says. More than that, he is capable of quietly giving the slip to his large, adoring following, and getting back to the vein of what I take for his best work, those two "failures" in his illustrious list, The Ice Storm and Ride with the Devil." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)

"Lee has been able to work successfully in an impressively wide range of films — including VFX-heavy Hollywood superhero blockbusters (Hulk), VFX-heavy quiet fables (Life of Pi), Taiwanese tales (Father Knows Best), American westerns with a twist (Brokeback Mountain), martial art ballets (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Chinese-style family dramas (Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman), American family dramas (The Ice Storm), literary classics (Sense and Sensibility), civil war dramas (Ride With the Devil), spy melodramas (Lust, Caution) and hippie comedy-dramas (Taking Woodstock)." - Variety

"Lee respects the conventions of whatever period he is filming, and it is notable that, unlike many of his New York University Institute of Film and Television counterparts, he has not, as yet, been swayed by the unholy burden of contemporary rectitude." - Mario Reading (The Movie Companion, 2006)

"Ang Lee is a consummate professional; his films are handsomely mounted, well acted, crisply photographed and a little cold to the touch. With his longtime filmmaking partner James Schamus - who has, at the time of writing, been a producer of every one of Lee's films and screenwriter of all but two - Lee evinces a particular interest in cultural and generational conflicts as they play out within and between individuals." - Jessica Winter (The Rough Guide to Film, 2007)

"After his first three films, Pushing Hands (1992), The Wedding Banquet (1993), and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), most people thought they had Ang Lee pegged as a maker of delicately funny Taiwanese family comedies, wryly observing the dilemma when filial duty collides with personal satisfaction. Upon which he started zigzagging off into one unexpected genre after another." - Philip Kemp (501 Movie Directors, 2007)

"Sometimes films ignore other points of view because it's simpler to tell the story that way, but the more genuine and sympathetic you are to different points of view and situations, the more real the story is." - Ang Lee

"On a Chinese film you just give orders, no one questions you. Here, you have to convince people, you have to tell them why you want to do it a certain way, and they argue with you. Democracy." - Ang Lee