I interviewed Lust, Caution director Ang Lee the morning
after he was feted by the Seattle International Film Festival at a
tribute hosted by Gary Locke. If you’re anything like me, you have a
hard time imagining Gary Locke watching a film filled with graphic sex
and then chatting up the director. But apparently he did an admirable
job.
So I heard our ex-governor (Gary Locke) introduced the
screening last night. How did that go?
Were you there?
No, I wasn’t. I wish I could’ve been.
His questions—he was so like a pro. A film critic wouldn’t do
as good.
[Laughs.] He’s had all the
public-speaking experience; we just sit behind our computers. What
sorts of things did he ask?
Like about the sex scenes, how important that was… He didn’t just
have a set of questions; he was very reactive too. A total natural.
Well, we’ll get to the sex scenes in a minute. First I want
to hear about how you chose to adapt this story, and how you originally
became interested in Eileen Chang’s work.
We’re all interested in her work growing up—when you’re about
a teenager, you start to read her books. She’s the most beloved writer
in modern Chinese. But not many people read this later work. It’s
peculiar; it’s so not Eileen Chang’s kind of writing. She spent 30
years on 28 pages. It’s very strange—when I came across the story
two or three years ago, I had to check to make sure it’s really her.
She did most of her famous stories before she was 25—she’s a
genius—but this was published in her 50s, I believe. The words
are more hidden; the prose is very concise. They’re written like a
movie, unlike her lavish literary writing in earlier days. It’s very
powerful. To think that we never had a tradition in literature to
discuss what women get from sex. And she uses that to examine humanity
and relationships in occupied Shanghai, our most glorious war against
the Japanese—which was kind of scary for people.
The combination of those two things was scary?
Yeah, what women get from sex, and in World War II—it’s like,
forget it, I’ve never seen anything like that! Personally I was very
much into the chance to portray something like an actress. I don’t
think Eileen Chang had that so much in her mind when she wrote this.
But I’m a filmmaker, but when I was young I was an actor like the
character, and I believe it’s by faking something that you actually
reach the true self, the hidden self.
So this film is very much about theater…
Reality versus truth. Illusion: Life is illusion; the truth is
hidden in the dark… Nothingness is the only thing that doesn’t
change. What’s stable is this void—emptiness, where we come from,
where we go to when we die.
It’s heavy stuff.
Heavy stuff! Life and death. She might have written it for different
reasons, though… She was in love with and married a national traitor.
It was a very painful experience, the only love she ever had, and I
think that’s what killed love for her.
So the story is somewhat autobiographical.
Yes, it is. I think she wrote most of the novels about things she
knew. This story was about herself, and that’s why it’s short. I think
she probably wrote it very quickly—this is my theory—and
for the next 30 years, she was trying to hide it, change it, make it
shorter, and harder and harder to read.
In some ways it’s a patriotic story, but in some ways it’s a
critique of patriotism.
Absolutely. Which has hardly been done in our culture. That’s why
it’s so scary—she was definitely way ahead of her time. Even
today, even though I think the time is right, it still felt kind of
scary to me. But it’s totally ripe. I’ve run into a few occasions like
that. The gay western, for example: The time was ripe. I didn’t see
that coming—I did it for obscure reasons, for personal
reasons—but it just hit the culture. I think this hits the
culture too. It’s an examination of and disillusion with the way we
were brought up.
You’ve already opened in Taiwan.
It’s been open five and a half days now.
But it hasn’t screened in China yet.
No, they will postpone, probably until November.
Do you know if you’re going to have to make any cuts or
edits?
Yes, I delivered a cut already. But I still have to go through more
authorities.
What sort of changes did you have to make?
Mostly sex scenes, and the blame for the government, and the way
[the main character] tells the traitor [to escape assassination].
They’re not against sex or violence, but they don’t have a rating
system like there is here: All films are general audience. We have no
control.
That must be tough with this movie.
Yeah, you get the idea. You get the story and most of the texture,
but when you take the sex scenes out…
In some ways it’s a different movie.
It weighs differently. It’s a different viewing experience.
I’m curious about Brokeback
Mountain, which I saw in some ways as an experiment with
genre. You had the western, but you also had the mechanics of a
melodrama, almost. In this movie, too, it seems like you’re mixing
genres.
I cannot get out of the genre of melodrama—that’s what I was
raised with, whether it was a Hollywood movie or a Chinese movie. I
just have to use that. If I totally deny it, I’d be being untruthful to
myself. In film criticism, they like to stick to strict genres. They
like to categorize it. But for the viewers, I think most of them don’t
care. They just go to a movie. For them, it’s about setting a tone so
they can accept both, which I think I did. It makes it harder for
analysis. But I’m a filmmaker; I’m like the audience. I go with my
intuition, and that sometimes means borrowing genres, while being true
to my artistic vision.
