“Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” a film about a group of Iraq War vets who return home to a victory tour only to confront the contrasting realities of war and the retelling of it, opens this weekend at Movies 10.
Daily Journal film critic Pam Powell recently caught up with director Ang Lee.
Some of your earliest films such as “Pushing Hands” and “The Wedding Banquet” deal with the social and political issues in your home country of Taiwan. How do you think filmmaking will change in today’s current political and social environment?
Wow, that’s a tough question. From my perspective, I grew up in Taiwan in the Cold War era. I came here in 1978. I knew Americans from movies and televis
ion — romanticized versions of Americans.
When I first came to America, I actually saw real people. It was like walking through a big movie set. After 36 or 38 years … I’m so focused on filmmaking [and] many of them are American studies. That really helped me understand the country I admired and dreamed of — and also experience the reality and confusion.
To read the interview in its entirety as it is printed in the Saturday, Nov. 19th edition of The Daily Journal, go to daily-journal.com