Although Ang Lee is a Chinese-American director, Ang Lee was born in Taiwan and graduated from Taiwan's "National Academy of Arts". He directed "Pushing Hand", "Wedding Banquet", and "Food Men and Women", which received funds from Taiwan China Film Corporation and Taiwan The information bureau’s tutoring gold supports, the assistant director, the main actors Lang Xiong, Wang Lai, Jin Sumei, Gui Yalei, Yang Guimei, Wu Qianlian, Wang Yuwen, etc. are all Taiwanese entertainers. Situation, from the perspective of Taiwanese to look at the lives of contemporary immigrants from mainland China and Taiwan who immigrated to the United States. "Food Men and Women" is entirely funded by Taiwan's own funds. Except for the recording engineer and the screenwriter, the main creators are all Taiwanese, and they made authentic Taiwanese films in Taiwan. Therefore, I attribute Ang Lee to a Taiwanese director.
"Pushing Hand", "Wedding Banquet" and "Diet Men and Women" are a trilogy of Ang Lee family films. "Pushing Hands" is about the conflict between Tai Chi master Zhu Lao and his American daughter-in-law, touching on the conflict between Chinese and Western cultures, and truly expressing the sadness and joy of old age living in a foreign country. "The Wedding Banquet" talks about the relationship between homosexuality and heterosexuality. The story tells that Gao Weitong, who has a successful career in studying in the United States, is gay with Simon, an American man. Weitong is eager to satisfy his parents and has a grandson. The marriage came true, the second elder came to the United States to witness the marriage of his son and Weiwei, and finally Gao's father acquiesced in the relationship between Simon and the Gao family. Wei Wei is pregnant, expressing the director's concept of moderation and tolerance of traditional Chinese culture. In October 1993, "Food and Man", which was produced by China Film Investment in Taiwan, constructed a balance between the "food" and "sex" of Chinese Taiwanese. disintegration. In terms of themes, the conflict between the old and the new, and the ethical relationship of Chinese families have not changed. Faced with things, you don’t have to fight to the death. Family members have a kind of flexibility, or tolerance, or compromise, and their artistic conception has a common deduction. Features, but also interesting, innovative.
"Eating Men and Women" is set in the contemporary bustling Taipei, and talks about the process of deconstruction and reassembly of a family. Ang Lee said: "This is something I have been concerned about when I grew up in Taiwan, facing the natural struggle and sentimentality of family evolution, because the family is the spiritual fortress of childhood, when faced with its structural changes , there will be many people's feelings about the changing world, the impermanence of gathering and dispersing." The idiom "eating men and women" comes from the "Book of Rites", its meaning is roughly similar to Confucius's food, sex, and the desire of the belly is the same as that of men and women. Desires are closely related. The traditional Chinese family ethics are regulated by thousands of years of etiquette and moral standards. Later, due to the development of commerce, the division of labor in the industry is meticulous, the competition is fierce, the pace of life is accelerated, family members meet less often, and individualism is inflated, and family members no longer resemble farming society. The family is as cohesive as it is, and communication between members has become increasingly lacking. The only time for a family to sit together and eat together is to accept the continuation and harmony of family life. However, the traditional habit of "eating without talking", even if the family eats at the same table, they do not like to strike up a conversation and lose the opportunity for family members to communicate together. As for "sex", it is indispensable for human survival, development and continuation. Only when there is sex can there be a family, only future generations, and human development. It is tied together with the family, it is a unity. Chinese tradition is dominated by Confucianism, feudalism, especially the superiority of men and women, makes "sex" often regarded as taboo in traditional families and cannot be discussed openly, and "sex" has become a dark culture. Minority and even personal lust can never be made public or a topic of discussion, and the most basic human "diet" and "sex" are suppressed. And Ang Lee's "Food Men and Women" is packaged with Chinese food, changing the old and outdated Chinese moral and cultural views.
Chinese families pay attention to sacrifice and dedication, and it is not easy to have self at home. The film outlines the issue of food and sex. The father brought three daughters and a family community. The strength of deconstruction comes from the fact that each person has several story lines. Various love stories make this family form new strength. Mr. Zhu Lao, a famous chef in a five-star hotel, is good at cooking. He lost his wife in middle age and raised three daughters independently. Under the influence of her eyes and ears, she has become a gourmet who is picky and rich. This eating habit has formed their critical character. Family upbringing has formed a tendency to be perfect in everything. The three daughters also have unique opinions and preferences on love and marriage. The traditional concept makes the relationship between the elders and the younger in the family orderly. The daughter is the big bearer of the father, and the father can never understand the thoughts of the three daughters, forming inner scruples, and the whole family becomes disharmonious. When they face the major events of life, they appear hypocritical, hypocritical, and lack sincerity and courage.
The three daughters represent different women in Taiwan today. Pressured by society and tradition. The eldest daughter, Jiazhen, also serves as a mother and is a middle school teacher with an old-fashioned personality; the second daughter, Jiaqian, is a middle-level cadre of an airline company. The youngest daughter, Jia Ning, is a hopeless admirer of romantic love with a strong rebellious heart. After the death of his wife, Mr. Zhu worked hard to prepare meals for his daughter and the younger daughter of a neighbor who divorced a young woman, in order to satisfy the senses brought by the color, aroma and taste of Chinese food. To understand her daughter's current situation, you can only use Sunday's dinner to figure it out, including their love and sex life. The family is a symbol of "natural principles" and moral norms. There are four father and daughter in this family, the eldest daughter virtualizes their relationship, the second daughter has sex with her breakup boyfriend, and the youngest daughter "prys" away her girlfriend's boyfriend. The three daughters always thought that their father, Mr. Zhu Lao, who was single for many years, needed his children to take care of him. Whenever he put Mr. Zhu in the first place, it also became an excuse for them to avoid marriage in disguise, but the desire to create a new life surged in their hearts. . Unexpectedly, the old father publicly announced his relationship with the young woman Liang Jinrong at the dinner table, but Liang Jinrong is the eldest sister of a classmate at Jiazhen University. The traditional concept of generation causes family chaos and confusion, rejection and even indifference. The three daughters and their father's independent demands on sex, career, and feelings are facing a precarious situation that is about to fall apart, and they have completely lost their due cohesion. Traditionally, the father is the head of the family, the embodiment and standardizer of "propriety" and "rules". Once his lust is exposed in front of his children, the father can only be given the ugly name of "disrespecting the old". But it was also the father who broke the deadlock and finally realized the transformation from disintegration to reconstruction of the family. Mr. Zhu was misunderstood by his daughter's filial piety. The chef's father also affirmed his daughter's cooking skills. The director ended with the daughter serving the soup, the father taking over, and contacting each other. Although it was a farewell feast for the daughter to stay away from, it was the heart of the father and daughter. The beginning of the same. Ang Lee borrows this family to be torn apart as a metaphor for the deconstruction of the traditional family. With the development of the plot, let them have their own homes and re-establish the harmony of the father-daughter relationship.
Ang Lee has always paid attention to the theme of family ethics. "Pushing Hands", "Wedding Banquet" and "Diet Men and Women" all show the aggregation and differentiation of families. The older generation is Chinese, while the younger generation, the first two films are Chinese and foreign. The theme of the fusion of Fang culture, "Diet Men and Women" is based on the frustration and growth of Taiwan's modern professional women. The director shows that the family is the force that unites people, holds each character in the play, and narrates the Chinese people in the patriarchal society. From the attachment character, he created a kind, generous, benevolent, authoritative and awe-inspiring positive image of the head of the family. "A family relationship traditionally dominated by the father has been able to find a new balance after going through crisis and conflict from a false equilibrium." However, after careful consideration of the family trilogy, the three plays are all centered on the father, but the father's situation and results are obviously different, revealing a sense of pessimism and a sentimental taste. The family shown in the film is representative, with its authenticity and sociality. In the conflict between the traditional and modern differences in the family, there are many meticulous helplessness in life. At the end of "Pushing Hands" is the desolate life of a pair of old people from the mainland and Taiwan living in a foreign country. They support each other and give people a feeling of being deprived of not knowing where they are. Behind the old man are new families, young daughters-in-law and mixed blood with different blood and cultural combinations. grandson. In "The Wedding Banquet", the elderly couple felt melancholy and helplessness about their son's bisexuality who immigrated to the United States. The couple returned to Taiwan, which is semi-open and surrounded by the sea, and cherished each other for the rest of their lives. In "Diet Men and Women", Mr. Zhu and the young woman Liang Jinrong (the same age as the father's eldest daughter) combine. Liang Jinrong is pregnant with Mr. Zhu's flesh and blood, which is a continuation of his own spirit and life. The father of the three films, as a symbol of the traditional spirit, has gone through a path full of twists and turns from passive regression, to helpless sacrifice, and then to resolutely making a fortune.
Why does the film portray the image of the father in a reasonable manner? The reason is that Li An was deeply influenced by his father and traditional Chinese culture. Li An's parents are both engaged in education. His father is the principal of Tainan No. 1 Middle School and his mother is a teacher. His parents have a great influence on him. Ang Lee grew up under the influence of traditional Chinese culture, with Chinese blood flowing in his veins. Even though he stayed in the United States for 14 years, Ang Lee's thoughts and feelings are still very Chinese. , warm tolerance and understanding, with a Taoist philosophy of life. Ang Lee is familiar with the connotation of Chinese culture and is good at grasping the inner emotional world of Chinese people, so he can often give a new look to those typical Chinese-style plots. He stayed in the United States for a long time in his prosperous years, was exposed to American social and cultural life, and was familiar with European and American dramas and Western films. Compared with the same world-class directors Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang who lived in Taiwan for many years, he had a sophisticated understanding of Western society and culture. There is more understanding and perceptual awareness. The understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of both Chinese and Western cultures has become his forte. In the United States, but can always maintain the identity and identity of a bystander, the overall concept is clear. He said: "It is this overall concept that makes it easier for me to separate from them than them, and to grasp the theme from a relatively pure commonality and human emotion." "Diet Men and Women" can be called "middle school as the body, western learning as the body". Use" successful works. The storyline emphasizes the importance of traditional Chinese ethics, but the protagonist's thoughts and feelings are modern and can directly communicate with the feelings of contemporary audiences. Ang Lee's films are not like Hou Hsiao-hsien's films, which are the precipitation of historical reflection, nor do they focus on the entire reality level with the humanistic spirit of "literature conveys the truth". With the gradual sophistication and maturity, the rich accumulation of director experience, the ability to appreciate the cultural differences between the East and the West, get out of the barriers of self, consciously establish an international dialogue with the world film circle, and enter a wider world to express the world and people's feelings, Behavior or philosophy is the strength that other Taiwanese directors lack.
The unique concept of multi-line promotion of polyphony, the combination of Chinese and Western film art styles, and the fusion of business and art are another feature of this film. The Ang Lee family film trilogy is a melodrama that revolves around a central conflict. Ang Lee has undergone five years of drama training at the Taiwan Academy of Arts and the University of Illinois in the United States. Influenced by stage plays and Hollywood movies, his films have strong drama, and their structural layout and psychological development pay attention to succession and transformation, and have a lyrical meaning. Character development is extended. Ang Lee is good at creating a narrative style of light comedy. The dramatic plot placement has become an important fulcrum of his film structure. The narrative units of his films are small and concentrated, and the transition between scenes or between paragraphs is clear. In the images, most of them selectively create a very limited and relatively closed space-time. The use of shots and framing, the rhythm and collocation of editing, all highlight the mood and situation of the characters. In addition to the narrative form formed by superior production technology, it also covers the balance sought by the content of the plot between Eastern and Western cultures. His films show a certain realistic feature in the ontology effect. It seems that the camera has inadvertently captured and recorded the flow of a short period of time in the vicissitudes of life. If the structure of "Pushing Hand" and "The Wedding Banquet" adopts a single line, then "Diet Men and Women" adopts a multi-line structure. The father and three daughters have become the protagonists of the film in the thematic sense, and the plot is broken down into multiple clues extending to Everyone's life, intertwined from time to time, is a multi-repetitive mode. The three daughters represent the self-confessed escapist women, modern professional women and young happy girls. They are separated from the father and others. The three daughters narrate separately. Step by step, a gimmick followed by a gimmick, rendering the atmosphere, just right, very entertaining. The photography is smooth and simple, especially in the use of natural light, and the technique is very skilled. Synchronized recording, soundtracking, script management, neat editing and scene scheduling, you can't find the place where you miss or lose control. In the direction of performance, the grasp of emotional scenes is quite restrained and comfortable. Lang Xiong plays Mr. Zhu Lao, and Wu Qianlian plays the second daughter's subtlety, which can not only express the rich inner activities and emotional waves, but also almost all the points, which appear clean and neat. . The use of food to express the individual and mutual relationship of family members is handled harmoniously and meticulously, unlike the simplistic and deliberately stylized interpretations of Ang Lee's first two films. It is a must in Taiwanese and Hong Kong films.
In the film, Ang Lee achieves a balance between art and business, both refined and popular, artistic and ornamental. With an excellent box office, investors can gain both fame and fortune, and gain the reliance and respect of investors. At the same time, people also see that his films seek a higher cultural taste under commercial packaging to explore the interesting orientation of human ethics and cultural conflicts. Not only has the self-cultivation character of "being born" with contemplation and harmony, nothingness and tranquility, but in principle of living in reality, he follows the principle of seeking progress, adapting to changes, and giving people a sense of "entering the world".
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