A citation for Ang Lee
Ang Lee at the forum following the special screening of The Life of Pi at SM Aura IMAX.
Tikoy Aguiluz was presenting an award from Cinemanila to the director Ang Lee. He asked us to write a citation. Here’s our draft. We got our information from Glenn Kenny’s excellent interview with Ang Lee at the DGA website.
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Today we honor a filmmaker who has gracefully defied classification. His body of work encompasses the martial arts movie, the suburban American drama, the erotic thriller, the Jane Austen marriage plot, the superhero action movie, the gay cowboy love story and the big 3D adventure.
He moves effortlessly between eras and settings, riding from the American Civil War to China in World War 2, from 18th century England to 1960s counterculture, from China once upon a time to the present day.
By resisting categories he stays fresh; by constantly changing genres he steers clear of repetition and fakery. This is a man who directed an adaptation of a beloved Jane Austen novel even before he could speak English fluently–proving that film is the universal language. In that language, he is Shakespeare.
He makes movies big and small, each one distinguished by his mastery of his craft, the compassion of his vision, and his boundless humanity.
In sum, describing Ang Lee is a challenge so we’ll just have to settle for this:
Ang Lee is A Humanist and A Great Filmmaker.
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