In the list of Chinese film directors, Ang Lee is undoubtedly a bright star. He is the most tender director, but also the most radical technological innovator. He is always warm and compassionate in the face of interviews, but he is bold and fearless in filming, like a lonely knight breaking into the abyss of the world's sighs.
Unlike many directors who have become more conservative after becoming famous, Ang Lee has never been in the book of merit, but has become more radical as he has grown older. From the once banned spy war erotic film "Color Ring" to the fantasy movie "The Fantasy Drift of the Young Pi", most of Lee's mid-career film experiments have been successful.
However, the one he values most is still marked by failure, and even the most fanatical Ang Lee enthusiasts believe that it is Ang Lee's wrong way.
Ang Lee's attempt, which is 3D + 4K + 120 frames (120 frames in Taiwan), is considered to be a major technological revolution in film history, and before the release of Billy Lynn's Halftime War, it has been considered by the industry to be enough to enter the history of film. But now, the question that haunts the minds of many fans is - is Ang Lee wrong?
Has his technological revolution failed?
Ang Lee firmly believes that 120 frames is the future trend of film, but reality hits him mercilessly. Even in the United States, where film technology is most developed, most theaters are reluctant to pay for Ang Lee's film innovation.
As of February this year, there are only more than 20 cinemas in China that support the 120-frame format, and Ang Lee's third 120-frame film "The Battle of Manila" will be released this year.
When ruthless ridicule and even cold treatment hit him, Ang Lee was still obsessed with being a technological innovator.
Is Ang Lee wrong? Perhaps, he was just one step ahead.
He did something that Cameron didn't dare to do
Throughout Ang Lee's directing career, he has been a bold and innovative director. From the oriental family ethics of "Wedding Feast" and "Eating Men and Women", to the comradeship of "Brokeback Mountain", to the 3D audio-visual feast of "The Fantasy Drifting of the Young Pi", Ang Lee dares to think and dare to do it, and is not content to lie on his own merit book.
By the time it came to Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle, he simply did something that even James Cameron didn't dare to try: 3D + 4K + 120 frames per second.
This is a subversive technological innovation, because we know that film is an art of a lattice still picture flowing up to produce the illusion of movement, while traditional films, generally 14-22 frames per second, and later 24 frames, can ensure that the recording and sound reproduction effects are not distorted under the limitations of the original sound technology.
120 frames per second is a thankless task for most people.
It can provide a very sophisticated, immersive audiovisual experience, but its production cost is very high, the technical difficulties are particularly difficult, not only the creators are struggling, most theaters are not willing to update the projection equipment, so as to achieve the original 3D + 4K + 120 frames per second effect. To this day, 24 frames is still the industry standard.
In fact, long before Ang Lee, filmmakers have tried 30 frames, 48 frames or even 60 frames, such as "The Hobbit" is 48 frames, and James Cameron advocates 60 frames. But without exception, none of them have shaken the industry standard of 24 frames.
From frame 24 to frame 120, you can imagine how big Ang Lee's steps were, how bold he was to push this thing forward. It's a path without a model of success, a lonely and dangerous bush of thorns.
But Ang Lee wanted to try.
Everyone in the industry is looking forward to "Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle" and they want to see how Ang Lee does. There are also many people with malicious intentions, waiting for Ang Lee's revolution to fail and fall from the altar accumulated by past works.
"Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle" was decent in terms of word-of-mouth response and did not fare well at the box office. In hindsight, it belongs to the kind of film whose reputation has risen with time.
But the follow-up "Twin Killers" fell a big heel, in Ang Lee's film career, this may be the biggest Waterloo, for this reason, American capital has shaken confidence in Ang Lee, if this year's release of "Battle of Manila" is not successful, Ang Lee may face the embarrassing situation of no capital to support 120 frames in the future.
Judging from the feedback from reality, Ang Lee's film revolution has failed for the time being. The 120-frame + 4K+ 3D high-spec experience has not become the new standard in the industry, nor has it spawned a steady stream of "3D special" orders like "Avatar".
But Ang Lee's failure this time is not because of the technology itself, but because of the story he chose.
He did not find that balance between technological innovation and popular aesthetics.
"Twin Killers" is not a mediocre film, it explores the multiple attributes of people, life and death, bondage, fate-like survival experience, and even the "perceptual dislocation" brought by digital images within the framework of Ang Lee's skilled "father and son" narrative.
It has Ang Lee's authorial thinking, but it is clearly not a film that makes the public boil, and the faces of disappointment are so clear, and the audience who leave the cinema blandly is full of their indifference to the film.
It is precisely because the deep lines of this story are too entangled, and the surface shell looks so old-fashioned, that it is destined not to be a popular movie for the public, and it cannot carry the mission of "technological innovation can be accepted by the public".
The failure of "Twin Killers" is not in the technology, but its story is not enough to impress the hearts of most viewers, no matter how much technical enthusiasm Ang Lee pours into it, how much Shakespeare's tragic connotation is implied, most of the audience gives the evaluation that it is "not moving enough", not as shocking as "Avatar" and "The Lord of the Rings".
Ang Lee insisted: "There is no bad medium, only bad artists." ”
In the face of the trendy criticism of technological innovation, he said: "The reason why film is so good is that for more than a hundred years, countless geniuses and craftsmen, as well as the audience that constantly gives feedback, have made it sophisticated and complex." I believe that numbers also have a very different beauty, a fantastic beauty. I'm looking for it. ”
The technological revolution needs phenomenal cinema
Looking back at film history, all major film narratives or technological innovations have an epoch-making film as a footnote.
For example, Hitchcock's "Horror" refreshed people's understanding of thrillers; Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" provided a landmark existence for science fiction films; and the more widely known is "Avatar", which single-handedly refreshed the projection equipment of the industry.
Therefore, if Ang Lee's technological revolution is to be accepted by the public, it must be supported by phenomenon-level films, only in this way will the capital that seeks benefits and avoids harm will throw money one after another, and the theater line will be forced to update the projection equipment.
It's like "Avatar" promoted 3D technology to be accepted by the public, this is because it is a story that is suitable for all ages, easy to understand and can arouse the audience's touch, it essentially tells the story of the demolition of an alien planet, it looks like it is shooting aliens, in fact, it is shooting people, it is the sadness and ups and downs that can be felt by the public.
But "Twin Killers" is not this kind of story, on the one hand, it is too obscure and too personal in emotion, and on the other hand, it is too similar to the story of the european and American mass production agents at the end of the last century, which makes Chinese audiences unable to empathize, and American audiences feel clichéd.
The 120-frame "Twin Killers" gives people a rich and tiring viewing experience, it is a film worth some technology enthusiasts pondering repeatedly, but for most people, it lacks the desire to be revisited.
This also points to the fundamental contradiction of 120 frames at this stage. It is certainly an extremely advanced audiovisual experience, but the high cost is also unbearable for ordinary theaters.
If there is no phenomenon-level movie like "Avatar" to promote it, there will not be many theaters forced to make equipment updates for it, especially at the moment when the epidemic continues, the majority of theaters are difficult and unable to pay for Ang Lee's technological innovation.
So, the reality is that Ang Lee made a 120-frame movie, but in most theaters in China, it's still played by the most conventional equipment.
Capital is cruel, how enthusiastic it is when you succeed and how indifferent it is when you fail.
Ang Lee's helplessness is that his revolution must require a steady stream of capital injections, but capital values commercial returns most.
After "Twin Killers", the voice questioning Ang Lee rose, and Ang Lee staggered off the stage, many saying that if the next movie fails again, there will be no big capital to pay for it.
Ang Lee seems to have opened a magic box prematurely and the public is not ready, but this does not mean that the 120-frame revolution is wrong, there will always be people trying, and Ang Lee is just one step ahead.
In the future, when the film industry has gone through the cold winter of the epidemic, some theaters have the ability to innovate their own equipment, and there will be a group of new directors to take the road that Ang Lee has not yet completed.
We can even imagine that if one day, the picture texture of streaming media is enough to compete with the cinema experience of 24-frame movies, when the audience is more and more lazy to go to the cinema, then the pressure of survival will force the industry to renovate itself, otherwise what awaits them is the fate of step by step closure.
Why do I still have Ang Lee full of respect
Ang Lee's technological innovation is also a response to the impact of streaming media on movies. After the epidemic, streaming media represented by Netflix has developed rapidly, and capital giants such as Warner, Disney, HBO, and Apple have spent a lot of money to create streaming media, while cinema movies have faced a trough under the double blow of the epidemic and streaming media.
When Ang Lee filmed "Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle" and "Twin Killers", he had already smelled the rise of streaming media, the film industry was facing a critical point of decline without innovation, and what he really wanted to make was a movie that only belonged to the theater, and you could only really appreciate its charm if you went to the movie theater.
Despite human nature, streaming is an inevitable trend, and home theaters that can adjust the schedule, temperature, and discussion with people will be more in line with the needs of this generation of young people than theaters.
As a film fan, I still admire Ang Lee's attempts and respect their courage to push the boundaries of film technology in the face of doubt. Because it's a thankless undertaking.
If Ang Lee is a sleek director, he can follow the template of "Eating Men and Women" or "The Fantasy Drift of the Young Pi", constantly copying his successful experience, harvesting the reputation of capital and audiences to meet him on the altar. But what he chose was to step out of his comfort zone, risk self-destructing the signboard, and boldly carry out a 120-frame technological revolution that no previous successful experience can learn from.
In this sense, Ang Lee is like Don Quixote in the film industry, he does an idealistic thing, and many people are attracted to film, and at first they are not touched by the idealistic impulse behind the light and shadow.
So, Ang Lee is not wrong, he is just one step ahead of the times. Just like Hitchcock who made "Horrors" in the past and James Cameron, who boldly innovated 3D technology, they looked farther and went further, and even if their efforts were frustrated, the legacy of the revolution would eventually be regained by future generations and turned into the most magnificent and gorgeous poems on the movie screen.
And this idealistic halo is like the miraculous monologue in Blade Runner:
What I have seen is absolutely unbelievable to you humans
I witnessed battleships burning on fire along the end edge of the constellation Orion
I watched the C-rays shine in the darkness near Don's Gate
All of these moments will eventually be lost
In time
Like tears
Disappear into the rain
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Which of Ang Lee's favorite movies do you like?
Written by | Zhou Lang Gu Qu
Edit | JASPER
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The original article was first published on the public account "Youjian University" under the "New Weekly"