Tan Dun and Ang Lee
Ang Lee has always been brave, and now he is brave. He let the world know that this is Forrest Gump, who constantly takes risks in the way of movies, and an unexpected Ang Lee.
Text | Tan Dun
I watched Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain" with my lover (female), and I was very touched and liked it... In retrospect, Ang Lee and I have known each other in New York for more than a decade.
Then, in the early '90s, a group of us gathered in the center of New York, much like the opera Bohemians. Like Ang Lee from Taiwan, I from Hunan, Chen Yifei from Shanghai, Chen Kaige and Ai Weiwei from Beijing to New York, Feng Xiaogang also filmed "Beijingers in New York" there, he stayed for 7 months. Zhang Yimou is also a regular visitor to New York, and he likes to eat New York's soba noodles the most, calling two bowls each time.
This makes New York interesting, where a group of idealistic young people come to New York from all over the region of Chinese culture – and Vivienne Tam in Hong Kong. Everyone who came here carried two bags, one for the soft and the other for their own experiences. Some have been cut into the team and planted in the fields (Note: the insertion of the team refers to the knowledge of young people going to the mountains and going to the countryside... It should be similar to the spatio-temporal background of "Balzac and the Little Tailor" film), and some of them were workers.
As Feng Xiaogang said: New York is heaven, and New York is also hell. But for us, New York is magical, it's like a dreamer's paradise, a paradise for experimental artists. There you can see "neuropathy" from all over the world, very young and very hard, such as Chen Yifei just started washing cars, Ang Lee took the child as a nanny, I played the violin in the subway, and Ai Weiwei worked as a dragon runner in the theater.
Feng Xiaogang in New York
During the day we fight for milk bread, and at night we get together to talk about ideals and "brag.". Everyone blows the "cow" in the past, how I am in Hunan, how he is in Shanghai in Beijing, how is Ang Lee in Taiwan.
Among them, Ang Lee is the most important one in the city. He didn't brag much, he liked to listen, he didn't take a big stand, but he had a lot of contemplation. His appearance gives people a very calm and deep feeling.
One year during the Spring Festival, New York artists gathered to celebrate. That time I found that Ang Lee would have a lot of unexpected performances when he was calm.
"Spring Festival, how about we ask Ang Lee to sing a Taiwanese folk song for everyone?" Everyone booed.
Li Anlian said no, no, no, "That's a good idea, I don't have five tones..." Blushing and pushing, suddenly, he lifted his head and looked straight into a corner" He sang!
To be honest, he sings cutely and plainly, but from the point of view of my music, he is out of tune. After he finished singing, because of the out-of-tune, everyone's stomach hurt with laughter. He smiled and said a little embarrassedly, "I'm sorry I'm really incomplete, you guys are driving ducks to the shelves." Suddenly, his eyes widened again and he said, "I'll do another song!" "
This is Ang Lee, he's so cute. I always felt that he was Forrest Gump among our group of artists, and there was something very tenacious and simple in his life, and this tenacity and simplicity of his was something that he himself was not very aware of. When the second song was sung, everyone stopped laughing. Everyone felt that this was not a Taiwanese folk song, but a voice that came from the depths of his heart.
At first, I thought Ang Lee was a screenwriter, and I heard about the award for his script. I didn't know he was a director until he did Pusher. In fact, every time before making a movie, he would come to me and talk to me about music. Talk about "Push hand", talk about "Wedding Feast", talk about "Riding with the Devil", talk about his own kind of creation. He also used to come to our place for tea and talk about how to deal with the music. But he never told me to compose a piece. So we're actually a simple way to get along, and I don't think we have to compose music for him, and he doesn't feel like asking me to compose music.
Because in his impression, I was always talking to him about a very crazy kind of experimental music of mine, and he probably thought that my idea of music was too crazy, and if it was applied to movies, it would be worrying.
Ang Lee in his youth
While talking about the music of Ride with the Devil, he came to my studio to listen to my blowing. Ang Lee said: "I always feel that tao's voice has a deep connection with the vast land of the United States, with the Indians, and with the Mayan culture." He asked me if this kind of thing would be too Chinese and have Asian traces.
This makes me think that although Ang Lee is filming world themes and other ethnic themes, the penetration of Chinese culture is consistent with him. Including his later filming of "Sense and Sensibility", "Ice Storm" and "Brokeback Mountain", you can see Ang Lee's very deep feelings as an artist.
Ang Lee kept talking to me about music like this until one day in 1994, when he asked me to dinner in Chinatown. He asked, "What do you think of this kung fu film?" "
I said, "I'm not interested in kung fu movies. "At that time, listening to the fight between Hong Kong and Taiwan films, I felt like it was always like it came out of the video game room.
But Ang Lee said, "Because you're not interested, I want to talk to you, and I really want to do it from another angle." Because the martial arts thing is really too precious! "I listened: Ah, this Forrest Gump may have seismic thoughts.
When he talked about his childhood, he always felt that martial arts were very "divine", very strange, very spiritual, and very ethereal. That's right for my taste. When we talk about the origin of martial arts, we find that the art of martial arts comes from opera. The so-called fight is completely a fight of ideas, a contest of philosophies, a balance of yin and yang, and then Ang Lee said that this tension he felt he felt, and he wanted to use another angle to expand and extend this narrow martial arts. It was still 4 years before he made the film.
In fact, when I listened to Ang Lee talk about his own new perspective on martial arts, his exploration of the internal space of "xia", I was excited by him. Ang Lee is exploring how big a kind of space in the heart of the "hero" is, and this space is actually very broad. But how should this space be expressed musically? We talked about this problem for a long time, often from two or three o'clock in the afternoon to six or seven o'clock, it was dark, and the lights forgot to turn on.
Once he suddenly asked me, "How's your time lately?" "
I said I was writing a couple of symphonies lately. I asked him, "Who are you going to find for music for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?" (Because we've been talking this way before, and it never involves the cooperation of two people).) He said, "You write it." "
This is Ang Lee's way of speaking, which makes people feel cold.
After much discussion, we agreed to find a sound that was not an outward sound, but a deep-hearted impact. It makes you feel nervous and heart-wrenching. And the appearance of things, if you speed up the pace, add to the time when it is so casual and wasteful that you can't add it again, you find that there is nothing you can do.
Ang Lee asked, "Do you like Peking Opera?" "
I said, "I used to be a member of the Peking Opera Troupe. "Once there is a fight in Peking Opera, the percussion of the gong and drum must be a blow to the heart." This is the direction of finding martial arts music from opera percussion. Ang Lee himself likes to play some musical instruments, he likes to play the flute the most, and he also likes the huqin. Ang Lee asked me: In addition to opera percussion, is there any string music? He thought Huqin was interesting.
So we discussed the three main locations of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Gobi Desert in Xinjiang, and the Bamboo Forest in Zhejiang, is there a musical method that makes the story of these three places have a centripetal force? I said that the best way is to use a stringed instrument, not to say that the Forbidden City uses Jinghu, the bamboo forest uses erhu, and the Gobi Desert uses horsehead. If all three places use different instruments, I think it's dangerous for the film, because the narrative of the story requires centripetal force, a unified structure.
Ang Lee asked: Then who can play the cello like a huqin? Like Kyohu? Like a horse's head?
I said: Yo-Yo Ma.
In 1996, I was working with Yo-Yo Ma on the celebration of Hong Kong's return to the motherland. I am particularly grateful to Yo-Yo Ma, whose cello seems to be more than just the sound of the past, but also the sounds of the future, such as Deferzak, Schumann, Haydn, Bach, etc. This slowly led us to discover that the three of us were very much the same. We are all in New York, and the three of us digging and exploring artistic themes always exclude cultural boundaries. And no matter what kind of theme we are expressing, Chinese and Western or ancient and modern, there is a point, our original Chinese culture itself of education and lavender, we cherish very much, is placed in the position of the compass. Although Ang Lee is from Taiwan's Central Plains culture, Yo-Yo Ma is from a family of Chinese intellectuals, and I am from Chu culture, all three of us are involved in the creation and cooperation of mainstream Western culture. More importantly, we have never severed our ties to world cultures. Philosophically, the three of us were particularly fortunate to feel the sameness in the differences. This makes our cooperation so committed and appropriate.
Yo-Yo Ma as a young man
I talked to Yo-Yo Ma about Ang Lee: "This is a genius. But Ang Lee's first feeling for Yo-Yo Ma was hesitation. He later mentioned his hesitation very humorously: "Originally, I was talking to Tan Dun about Huqin, but he pulled Ma Youyou in again." "
When Ang Lee looks back on a gratifying creation, he appreciates that the collaborators will not be so loud, he just expresses it very simply. The relationship between the three of us is quite a gentleman's friendship as light as water. It is that there is a deep resonance, admiration and trust between each other, but we will not have too many atmospheric secular flattering descriptions.
I have never watched Ang Lee shoot, and when he filmed the scene of Zhang Ziyi and Yang Ziqiong walking on the wall in the Forbidden City in Beijing, he called me: You immediately flew to Beijing, this scene is very important.
When I met Ang Lee, I didn't expect such a polite Taiwanese student, who was wearing a PLA military coat and roasting the fire, and there was a TV monitor next to the fire, and his eyes were directly aimed at it. He muttered to me as he roasted the fire: How nice it would be if I could eat a New York steak at this time. Suddenly, his eyes lit up: "Hey, that place hangs the machine, Yang Ziqiong wants to..." "
You find this director very low-key, and in the process of this low-key, he is shaping a huge act. Watching him shoot the scene, I know that he is really calm, not pretended. After filming we went back to New York and recorded for the first time. I was worried that what if Ang Lee didn't hear that the cello was a backbone floating on the music, in case he said it wasn't what he wanted. But I found that as soon as Yo-Yo Ma pulled out this string, a very simple qing performance, I saw Ang Lee's expression loosen at that moment. Ang Lee began to play with Yo-Yo Ma. During the break, he took out Yo-Yo Ma's $6 million cello, and the two performed martial arts moves, and called his son to meet Yo-Yo Ma because his son was obsessed with cello.
I'm excited too. The composer is the least willing to let the director listen to the first recording, like you're a tailor, and when you're making the sleeves of a dress he looks at, you get nervous, you don't know what he can see when he looks at the sleeves. But Ang Lee "saw it." Usually a composer, a performer, a director, these three people will be like enemies looking at each other the first time, thinking, if this does not work, can I convince him to do it again from different directions? But the three of us were very relaxed, and the first recording was purely playful.
The second recording we chose Shanghai. We envision two different bands of folk music and symphony participating in this creation at the same time. Before flying to Shanghai, Ang Lee said, "I don't have that much money. "Our hearts were cold for a long time. He really didn't have any money, and his house was mortgaged to make this movie. Before that, we never talked about money, and at this point, when we talked about how to fly to Shanghai, how to pay for the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and the Chinese Orchestra, how to pay so many solo musicians, how to pay for the recording studio and the editing room, we found that Ang Lee was completely bankrupt. Later, we discussed whether we could find yo-yo Ma and my Sony Records company, and the record company would pay for it. I think Ang Lee is also very lucky, his exciting dream, so that everyone is willing to use their artistic careers to participate in this eight-character thing.
In order to shoot "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", Ang Lee's entire leg was lame. In 2000, the first thing we did when we went to Shanghai was recording, and the other thing was to find a Chinese medicine doctor for Rheumatism for Ang Lee. This time I found that Ang Lee's composure and meticulousness often make you ponder for half a day. I was particularly satisfied with the first recording, and I asked, "Ang Lee, what do you think?" "
Li An looked at me for half a day, pondered for more than fifty seconds (this is a long fifty seconds), and suddenly lifted his head and said, "It seems that the flute membrane is a little looser." "
Then he said: Everything else is very good. We laughed as we listened. He was very strange, these fifty seconds were actually thinking about the flute film. Later we explained to him that when the flute in the south is blown, the membrane should be loosened a little; the flute in the north should be tighter.
In the third sentence he said, "Do you think I can learn from this piper?" "
Everyone laughed again. We immediately took him to Yu garden to buy flutes, and after the first recording in Shanghai, he relaxed, in addition to looking for Chinese medicine to see rheumatism, he was learning the flute.
Ang Lee's feelings about comparing literature, comparing film, and comparing vision are very different. He always has the ability to see his strengths and strengths from the perspective of world culture. In Brokeback Mountain, I was very strongly aware of this. I think Brokeback Mountain makes you forget that it's about man-to-man problems, it's a man-to-man problem. That's why critics, film, literature, and the arts around the world have praised Ang Lee. This praise is not a bluff cheer, but a kind of worship from the heart. From his cultural background, we see a lot of things that are ignored by today's fashion and trends, so in Brokeback Mountain, what you feel is that people are very polite, very real, very brave, very fanatical. These four points are particularly convincing in Ang Lee's performance throughout the film.
The novel of "Brokeback Mountain" is so famous that Hollywood directors dare not pick it up. It is a theme about Western cowboys , similar in Cultural Content to Chinese Roots-Seeking Literature , pointing directly to the backbone and soul of the United States. This space is too limited. So I say Ang Lee is brave. After filming "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" two or three months, he took over this scene, and the world waited for his good play.
During this period, he only made one "Hulk", and I know that Ang Lee is full of energy in "Brokeback Mountain", and filming "Hulk" is just a break in the middle, so "Brokeback Mountain" is a real confidence. He was always like Forrest Gump, no matter how windy or windy it was outside, it didn't matter to him, it seemed to be a very natural behavior, and he practiced a very obvious Taoist philosophy.
Of course, there is also a state of American cinema now. I'm an Oscar judge myself, but I have a strong desire that everyone wants Ang Lee to win the award. I just got back from Australia yesterday, and the movie page of an Australian newspaper is full-page about Brokeback Mountain, about the Ang Lee phenomenon (much like the world was talking about before Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won the award). No film like Brokeback Mountain has such extreme praise and criticism, of course, from politics and conservatism. Many theaters in the Midwest of the United States have withdrawn films, and the same is true for small and medium-sized cities in Australia. Newspapers began to publish something else.
I read a lot, in cities that aren't screened, someone who takes his wife or girlfriend to watch Brokeback Mountain (which seems to tell him very strongly that he's not gay) says, "We don't understand, why do we have to drive two hours to another city to see such a touching film when we live in this area?" The headline in the newspaper was: This movie is not released in our city, it is not fair!
Ang lee
I myself expect that, whether from the point of view of a voter or from the point of view of Chinese, or from the point of view of a movie lover, I feel that Brokeback Mountain has won. He won the world's recognition of an outstanding Chinese - the cultural taste of the Chinese is very trustworthy and proud. The rest of the controversy is actually quite normal.
I love Brokeback Mountain very much. First, I like the music of Brokeback Mountain. A simple guitar from start to finish. I think that when Ang Lee uses this music, he always feels that this is like a Chinese guqin, and like the calligraphy of Chinese, so simple, but also full of depth and complexity. Second, the vision is also very good. I never expected the Midwest to be photographed like Chinese landscape paintings. It has a waiting, an infinite call, a call for the beauty of human nature, which transcends gender. Third, as a smooth, clean, very calm, do not pay attention to catharsis, do not pay attention to the effect and grand construction, do not pay attention to the contrast of one after another, this is what we contemporary directors are particularly sought for and valued.
I also particularly like Ang Lee. The English names of our two wives happen to be JANE. When chatting as a child, I would ask: Hey, which JANE? When my wife was confinement, he called and said, "I'm going to pass by and see your wife." I was very strange at the time, and it was the first time I received such a call from a friend. He came to deliver a Taiwanese porcelain cup with "Buddha" qi, and he said to my wife, "Confinement, it is better to drink water with this cup." "I think Ang Lee has a very faint affection.
Last year he won the prize in Venice, I made a phone call, and he answered it himself. I was surprised. He said, "Yeah, I've been answering the phone." Many artists automatically disappear when they are very beautiful, but Ang Lee does not have this concept. Whether it was in his most difficult and gloomy 6 years, or in his most proud life, he was the Forrest Gump.
All in all, no matter what time period, what kind of heat, what kind of knots he is in, his calmness will be very unexpected.
Movies rely on a wave of popularity, and film festivals and beauty pageants are all activities that can gather popularity. Movies are essentially urban attributes, that is, to stir up popularity and news, so for publicity, I go to cities or tourist areas and other places where there are many people. Film and art absolutely rely on artificial creation, neither is naturally formed, it is all a kind of artificiality, and its essence is so.
Ang Lee: "I think there are probably very few, even no, directors in the world who do so much publicity like me... The number of filming paths is related to personality, talent, cultural background and chance, and my film has to be promoted by myself. ”
Because this film really shook the backbone of the United States, and from a purely artistic point of view, it is also a very good example: when creating a new ideal from a multicultural point of view, it will bring a lot of surprises.
Ang Lee has always been brave, and now he is brave. He let the world know that this is a forrest Gump who constantly takes risks in the way of movies.