Ang Lee's New Film Drew Bad Reviews in New York. At the Taipei Premiere, He Seemed Uneasy Too

Ang Lee: everything about film has to be upgraded — “film criticism has to be upgraded too”

After the New York premiere of his new film Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, Ang Lee brought actors Joe Alwyn and Mason Lee back to Taipei on the evening of the 2nd for the premiere, a press conference and a post-screening panel packed with film and television professionals. Three screenings of the 3D, 4K, 120-frame version ran that day for industry people and the press.

“I feel very uneasy inside.” Facing the Asian premiere, Ang Lee looked plainly nervous. In three back-to-back events inside 24 hours, he said that line more than three times.

The bad reviews from some outlets after New York had clearly got to him, though he seemed to have braced for them. Even while shooting with such high-end technology, he said, he kept preparing himself: “once it comes out, I might get beaten up pretty badly.” Still, every time he introduced the film he asked people to give the new technology a chance.

As the first person to shoot a feature in 3D, 4K and 120 frames, Ang Lee carries a pressure unlike any he has faced before. At the press conference he admitted that if audiences don't respond well, some of the responsibility for the technology falls on him.

He thinks it may not be fair to judge this film in the terms used for 2D films. He came back again and again to the shooting techniques he had noticed on set that have no equivalent in 2D. “I think the ideal 3D film shouldn't rely on editing but on mise-en-scène. I can't do that yet, I still have to rely on editing, because the shots are just too hard — even getting one thing to look watchable is difficult.” As he explained, a note of grievance crept into his voice.

Faced with those reviews — or rather with the difficulties and doubts the shoot itself raised — Ang Lee's answer is to change things at the root, which might mean he no longer has to fight this alone. He said he is talking to camera manufacturers about making the cameras smaller and more sensitive to light, so more people can use them.

“I think the cameras need to be upgraded, the handling of the equipment needs to be upgraded, the acting needs to be upgraded, directing needs to be upgraded, film criticism needs to be upgraded too. Not that what came before wasn't good — films of the past were a very mature art form. It's just that we're at the beginning now, so the demands are different.” At the panel, every time someone from the industry asked about technique, Ang Lee answered at length and described the trouble he had run into during the shoot. When the panel's time ran out, he asked the organizers himself whether he could take more questions. “I really do have a lot I want to talk about, a lot I want to share.”

In fact, the response in Taipei was nowhere near as brutal as the one in New York. Much of the reason, of course, is that Ang Lee is a landmark director in Chinese-speaking regions, and audiences here feel an extra measure of affection for him. There were still verdicts along the lines of The Hollywood Reporter's — that the sheer lifelikeness pulls you out of the film — but plenty of industry people felt the 3D, 4K, 120-frame version let audiences feel the characters' emotions more directly, and praised the film's experimental spirit.

You can almost see the two camps taking shape before the film opens. For Ang Lee, that may not be what matters most. “I hope audiences can look at it the way they look at soccer and baseball. You can watch both on the same sports channel, but they're very different things. Comparing them is quite unfair — one is a baby, the other is a great art form.”

Under this new technology, Ang Lee says, feeling uncomfortable because the image is sharper is inevitable. But he believes the discomfort can be “adjusted to.” “Once people get used to watching it, it will be the new 24 frames.”

Film technology has indeed been through big shifts before: silent to sound, black-and-white to color, film to digital, 2D to 3D. Cinematic beauty, and what audiences' senses expect, keep getting redefined. Whatever audiences finally decide about this film, it has already left its mark on the history of film technology — it is the first film shot at 120 frames.

What's more interesting is this. Before the premiere, it made perfect sense that people were arguing about the new technology rather than the story. But now the story has been put in front of an audience, and at the panel every single question still circled the technology — cinematography, lighting, even where the subtitles sit drew plenty of questions. That is enough to show that the new technology has hit audiences far harder than the story has.

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is set to open in Taiwan and mainland China on the same day, November 11. Release is still some way off, but advance sales have already reached NT$7 million, which suggests audiences are willing to take a chance on the new technology.

Here are some highlights from the post-screening panel:

(Q: audience question, A: Ang Lee)

Moderator: More than a hundred years ago, people watching The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat — the Lumière brothers' first film — screamed and ran. The way we watch films, and what watching feels like, keeps changing. We said earlier that this new work is the director's search into new technology. Everyone who has known you this long says Ang Lee is a gentle, modest man, and yet in the work it seems to be the opposite, an opposite personality. When people think you belong to Chinese art films, you go and make an English-language film. When people take you for an art-film director, you make a martial arts film. People think you're gentle, and you make Lust, Caution. People think you're a very 2D person, and you make a 3D film.

A: I've been timid and shy since I was a child, but it isn't that years of bottled-up rebellion are coming out in the films. For me, there may be two sides. Inwardly, I think you need a bit of the killer in you to do this work. When I want something, once I've seen it, not having it is very hard to bear. That has nothing to do with a shy personality.

With this project, on the technical side alone we're skipping 15 or 20 years ahead, and people keep asking why nobody did it before. I say it's completely natural — you just want to see things clearly. I asked the manufacturers, “why hasn't this been done before?” They all said the same thing: “nobody ever asked.” I asked the question, then insisted on seeing what I wanted to see. That's really all it is. My timidity comes back once a film of mine is out; I live through it all over again, asking myself why I had to do a thing like this. In that situation I often regret it.

While I'm making it, I just feel I have to. It really doesn't have much to do with my personality. What you're seeing as something new, I've been living with for several years, and every step of it makes sense to me. Digital film is not film stock. Take lighting: a film image is flat, so how do you make a flat surface feel solid? Through light. Now it's 3D, both eyes are allowed 3D, and things come forward on their own. So why light a 3D film the way you light a 2D one? But if we don't use the 2D method, what do we actually know? Everything we understand about cinema comes from chasing 3D through 2D. It's already fixed knowledge.

You solve one problem, find the answer, and it opens up ten more. I think that's exactly how digital cinema should be approached. Once people get used to watching it, it will be the new 24 frames. There's no real reason for 24 frames — when Edison invented the movies it was 70-some frames, and the studio bosses decided 24 was cheap enough, so that's what they used.

Q: Watching in 3D, we feel the foreground and background go deeper. Was that your decision or the cinematographer's?

A: Honestly, what you've just described involves a lot that the technology still can't do. I think the ideal 3D film shouldn't rely on editing but on mise-en-scène. I can't do that yet, I still have to rely on editing, because the shots are too hard — even getting one thing to look watchable is difficult. Ideally the depth of field would run deeper than what we can see now, so the eye can wander freely, instead of the story or the director telling you what to look at. It isn't that simple: you go straight into the world, and your relationship with the film changes. No two people in the audience see the same thing, and I think that's closer to the ideal. Our eyes want to see something worth looking at, and having enough information is actually more relaxing, because the eye can pick things up on its own. With a 2D film you have to be told which spot to look at.

I'm talking to camera manufacturers right now, telling them their cameras have to get smaller — not so that I can shoot, but so that ordinary people can pick one up, and hand-hold it. That's the only way anyone will go and shoot this way. I don't want to wait decades for someone else to do it again. Second, depth of field and light sensitivity have to be more responsive — usually the smaller the body, the more sensitivity you need.

The cameras need to be upgraded, a lot of the handling of the equipment needs to be upgraded, the acting needs to be upgraded, directing needs to be upgraded, film criticism needs to be upgraded too. Not that what came before wasn't good — films of the past were a very mature art form, it's just that we're at the beginning now, so the demands are different. I hope audiences can look at it the way they look at soccer and baseball. You can watch both on the same sports channel, but they're very different things, and comparing them is quite unfair. One is a baby, the other is a great art form.

Pulling focus is another big problem. Everyone's eyes are different. For a shot moving from here to there, in the past you just moved across and pulled focus. Now there's a new problem: because everyone's eyes see differently, you can actually see the speed of the focus pull. So it has to be tied to the drama and the psychology, which makes it extremely difficult — almost impossible.

Q: With this medium and this technology, how would you handle a different kind of material? A film like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, say?

A: Given how much we understand and control of this technology today, I think we haven't started yet. We should be shooting things that are dramatic, small and realistic; once we have a handle on that it will feel safer. For something more unreal, a highly designed genre like a martial arts film, give me two or three more films and I might be able to try. There's still a lot to break through, because once you can see clearly, you realize the methods of the old cinema aren't enough. So we start with realism.

There's also the visual effects department, which I have to strengthen, the same as the cameras. Right now old-age makeup doesn't hold up, and things like the blood in a killing don't look real either — a lot of things look wrong, so we need post-production to help. This is digital cinema; it isn't film stock exposed on location. Once that's solved there will be more illusory things we can do. I hope that before I retire I can still make a romantic comedy or a musical. And 120 frames wasn't picked at random: past roughly 100 frames the eye stops seeing flicker, and 120 is the digital frame rate closest to the human eye.

Q: When we watch a film, many people are distracted by the subtitles. Could that change how we experience it?

A: That's a very good question. It wasn't until I saw the subtitles that I thought: this film already carries so much information, and now you have to read subtitles as well. But we were careful about where to put them, because whether the sightline sits in front or behind decides where the eye fixes. Our eyes also adapt quickly to movement up, down, left and right — in the old films we could cut fast, but here adaptation is slower. The old editing still works, but camera movement has to be handled carefully; we have to think about where your eyes will be.

We are aware of it, but with information this rich, subtitles are a burden wherever you put them. All we can do is keep that burden as small as possible. Honestly, I wanted to cut a lot of the subtitles, but some friends said that would feel like being cheated.

Q: At 120 frames, the grading, in coming back to something realistic and true to life, seems quite successful. Did you try telling this film through different kinds of light?

A: Not yet. As I said, realism isn't the end for me, only the beginning. Making this film I had real doubts about the grading; some things I haven't solved, some things about digital cinema I don't yet understand, and it's hard to work the way I used to. That doubt is there. Beyond realism, what it has now is a kind of beauty and sufficiency — not a heavily rendered beauty, but the beauty of realistic information, of having enough.

Really seeing something is the brain and the heart working together. When your brain and your heart keep recalibrating, that shifting track is interesting and also quite painful. Personally, I strongly disagree with anyone who splits technology and art into two things. They're one. How you see and how you express are two sides of the same thing. I'm a man who believes in film more than he believes in life, and my relationship with film seems to be changing — there's a sense of subjectivity, of being implicated, very different from looking at other people's stories in the third person, the way I used to.

Cover image courtesy of Double Happiness Films