The Engineer of Modern Perplexity: An Interview with Edward Yang

Robert Sklar
When you think of a contemporary new-wave cinema movement often hampered and harassed by a repressive
government and hostile establishment media, the country that first comes to mind is likely to be Iran. But don't forget
Taiwan, suggests the Taiwanese new-wave filmmaker Edward Yang. In his view, the movement that he helped to launch
some two decades ago, and that has gained a prominent place in world art cinema primarily through his own work and
that of Hou Hsiao-hsien, has never found favor in its home country. The international triumph of his latest film, Yi Yi (A
One and a Two), for which he won the best director prize at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, seems unlikely to change his
reception or reputation at home, Yang believes. Yet at least, as the first of his seven feature films to receive commercial
U.S. distribution, it may finally bring him recognition in North America as one of the significant filmmakers of our time.
Born in 1947 in Shanghai, China, Yang emigrated with his family to Taiwan in 1949 after the communist victory on the
mainland. He studied engineering in Taiwan and at the University of Florida, and briefly enrolled in the University of
Southern California film school before taking up a job in the computer industry in Seattle, where his parents had settled.
In 1981, after (as he notes below) Taiwan suffered the shock of the U.S. opening diplomatic relations with mainland
China, he returned to Taiwan to write a screenplay for a friend's film, and remained to write and direct his own works.
These include That Day, On the Beach (1983), Taipei Story (1985), The Terrorizer (1986), A Brighter Summer Day (1991),
A Confucian Confusion (1994), and Mahjong (1996), before Yi Yi.
Yang's central concern is with present-day life in Taipei, Taiwan's capital city, with its complex collision and blending of
Chinese tradition and global modernity aptly encapsulated in his term Confucian Confusion. His focus is on family life, on
how different generations (and genders) negotiate social transformation and the new values of commercial life and
popular culture. His narratives develop slowly and turn on small incidents or odd coincidences, eruptions of desire and
willful testing of social codes. Yi Yi, the most evocative and fully realized exploration of his themes, is a nearly three-hour
film with the density and texture of a realist novel of manners. It concerns the Jian family, headed by NJ (Wu Nienjen), a
middle-aged businessman in a computer firm facing a crisis over finding new products to market. Events fly out of
control from the start at his brother-in-law's wedding when the groom's old girlfriend shows up and disrupts the
celebration. Soon NJ's elderly mother-in-law suffers a stroke, his wife Min-Min (Elaine Jin) experiences a spiritual crisis
that leads her to a religious retreat, and his teen-age daughter Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee) and young son Yang-Yang (Jonathan
Chang) get involved in private emotional struggles of their own. NJ confronts his own life paths not taken when the girl
who loved him in his youth, and whom he rejected, reappears as a sophisticated woman married to an American
business executive. Comic and poignant, Yi Yi delicately delineates the moral and emotional climate of contemporary
society for which Taipei serves as a microcosm. Edward Yang spoke with Cineaste about his career, his new film, and his
contentious relations with Taiwanese media, during the 2000 New York Film Festival.--Robert Sklar
Cineaste: What led to the emergence of the Taiwanese New Wave?
Edward Yang: By the time I had a chance to make films, Taiwan from a political viewpoint was at the lowest point in its
history. In 1979 Jimmy Carter recognized mainland China as the official government of China. That was a big blow to
Taiwan's self-confidence and self-esteem. But for my generation, that low point was actually a high point. It encouraged
us to have confidence, to rely on ourselves. I chose to go back, because there was a chance for me to participate in a
friend's filmmaking project. That was fateful. It was part of the sudden maturing of a generation. We knew we were
going to take over. There was a big burst of creative energy because all the old formalities had gone to pieces and now it
was a brand-new world. Nothing really stands, so let's do something. That's the best chance for creativity. Taiwan New
Wave cinema started from that awakening.
Cineaste: What was mainstream filmmaking like in Taiwan before the New Wave, and how have things changed in
Taiwanese film culture since you began your career?
Yang: The Taiwan film business was very much like China's. It was for propaganda. They spent millions and millions to
make a film, say, about a certain national hero. It praises a guy who sacrificed his life to save a bridge during the war and
protect the nation. It was very Stalinistic. The film business had a very gloomy image. To this day film people still treat
their own profession as propaganda. They love to manipulate opinion, especially now that it's a so-called democratic
society.
Cineaste: Do you feel that you're creating a portrait of Taiwan in your films?
Yang: I think so. Part of it is economic. It's cheaper to set a story in the present time, because I don't have to build sets.
I can use everything that's right there, and work efficiently with much less cost. If we're sensitive enough, we can put the
subject matter into the reality around us and basically tell a story even more effectively. Instead of saying that I have to
be a social critic, if you're conscientious enough in that situation, that will be the end result. Instead of putting a label on
myself, if I tell an interesting story, that's the best way to express it.
Cineaste: Do you have a viewpoint that you could put in words, or do you leave it to the viewer to draw his or her own
conclusions?
Yang: I wouldn't intentionally put in my viewpoint. I want to bring up something as naturally, as neutrally as possible,
and let viewers have their own viewpoint. That's my intention in all of my work--otherwise it would be propaganda. If I
feel something, I would much rather portray it from a neutral position, the universality of being human.

Cineaste: In other words, you're not saying that what occurs in your films are specifically Taiwanese cultural
phenomena, it's more like something that could occur in any country?
Yang: I think some of the topics are quite universal, and others quite local. Cultural influences and practical reality
sometimes have enough force to make people in a story respond the same way. In that case, I would be very conscious
about portraying something interesting about Taiwanese society, because the response is a little different from that in
other societies--so that when viewers from other societies see the film, they will notice the difference. I would rather
treat my stories that way, rather than using costumes and grandma (tang ruyun) and ting-ting (kelly lee) share a quiet
moment in yi yi (a one and a two), edward yang's portrait of contemporary taiwanese family life. other traditional
elements to impress someone other than our own people with exotic feelings about it.
Cineaste: Yi Yi has received the most enthusiastic response in Europe and North America of any of your films. Why do
you think that's so?
Yang: I was pleasantly surprised by so much positive response to this film. Perhaps it's just that I've been in this
business a long time. From the beginning I just focused on trying to build a credible reputation for the quality of my
work. I sweated through many years, and it's time to graduate. There's a lot of luck in getting recognized at such a high
level. Maybe it's my turn this year. It'll be some other filmmaker's turn next year. It's like a commencement and I got the
diploma. It's like I've been told, OK, you're ready to work at the next level. I'm glad that it happened later in my life than
earlier.
Cineaste: Somebody wrote that you got the best director prize at Cannes, but maybe you should have won for best
screenplay. Was your screenplay completely written out? Did you do any improvising or change anything with the
actors?
Yang: Everything. To me writing and directing go hand in hand. You can't separate the two responsibilities. Writing,
from the very beginning of the idea, is like the blinking of a light bulb in your head, and until completion the whole
production process is writing, one way or the other. Shooting is writing, editing is writing, preproduction is writing, and
auditioning for the cast is also writing. Improvisation is also part of writing. I think I'm fortunate that I started my career
not in the tradition of the industry. We had to improvise a lot, to find alternative ways to accomplish something. It
makes me feel lucky that I trained as an engineer. Engineering is a practical thing. I call it basically problem-solving, and
nothing else. When I started directing, this training gave me psychological readiness. You had to make a thousand
decisions a day. Especially in an industry in such poor condition, you had to improvise to make something work. Even to
this day, that's part of the process.

Cineaste: There's a density of character in Yi Yi that many critics have commented on. They've compared the film to
series television, or to a sprawling novel. How did you create such character detail?
Yang: Something that I noticed early in my career is that the initial point of penetration is very important. It defines a
lot of things. Sometimes we need to be a little bit contemplative, because once you enter the story from a certain angle
you basically decide the outcome of it. Sometimes I just walk around a subject, without committing to it, until I find the
right angle. In the case of Yi Yi, from the beginning I knew the structure of the story provided a great angle. I could save a
lot of space and time in telling a very big story just by looking at a family, because a family represents all age groups. But
I knew I was too young to treat the subject, so I let it sit until I was more aware of things going on. It just settled in
subconsciously, so by the time I was ready to write the script, the first draft was finished in ten days. I enjoy telling
stories, but I didn't realize this until I became a filmmaker.
Cineaste: The film has several powerful portraits of willful women.
Yang: You can find that in all of my work. Women are not as weak as we thought, especially in Chinese society.
Women in Asian society are the yings, men are the yangs. Women are in the shadows, but actually they run a lot of
things from the shadows. I have a lot of respect for women. Not that I particularly focus a lot of attention on women. If
we look at a family as a horizontal structure, I knew that I had to add vertical elements. So Sherry, NJ's old girl friend, is
basically an element of the past, and the young boy Yang-Yang is an element of the future. That creates an axis of
verticals. That makes the sphere more complete. That was a conceptual thing from the very beginning.
Cineaste: Do you have a specific visual or editing style that you feel communicates your viewpoint on a story?
Yang: Not really. My philosophy is that everything is decided by the subject matter. If the subject matter needs to be
tense, restless, upsetting, I would use shorter cuts and tighter camera angles. That's why the initial penetrating point is
the important thing. If you detach camera angles and camera positions from the substance, things don't make sense at
all. Every event has one best position to observe from. Sometimes you have so many things happening at one time in a
scene that your attention is diverted in many ways, so sometimes you want to be in a neutral position, and it's better to
look from a distance. You also have to be aware of the risk of using close-ups. You might lose important information if
you restrict the viewer's attention to a very focused spot. We better have enough reason not to need to see the body
language, the way the character interacts with the space he's in.
Cineaste: How did you make the change from engineering to film?
Yang: Actually I was quite passive. Parents always want you to be in technology, so that when you graduate you can
get a good-paying job, and they feel secure. If you're interested in the humanities, they think you're going to starve. On
college-entrance exams I did too well. I qualified for the higher echelon in education, which led me into engineering, and
I felt terrible. I wanted to retake the exam and do worse. Reality takes you in another direction. After I got my bachelor's
degree I entered graduate school in the U.S. and studied electrical engineering again. I went into the newest and hottest
program, the Center for Infomatics Research at the University of Florida, which I think was the first information
technology program. I figured I would get a degree while seeing the world. There were so many exciting things
happening--rock and roll, the Vietnam war, hippies, smoking dope, free love, protests on campus. It was a very
interesting time. After I got my masters degree, my advisor said, 'OK, now on to your Ph.D.' I said I was going into films,
and he said, 'You're crazy.' So I went to USC, and then I realized I didn't have talent at all. I didn't have what it takes to
get into the film business, so I dropped out. I recognized that I better not dream this dream because I didn't have what it
takes. I found a job in Seattle at a research laboratory that contracted to do classified defense projects in
microcomputers. I was among the first generation of designers and applicators for microcomputers and
microprocessors. By the time I turned thirty I was pretty well established, with a team of seven or eight guys working on
some very interesting projects. Later on I made the association that designing is like writing, and I realized that this
background helped me a lot. After a couple of years as an engineer, of course, the routine bored me. One night, I was
driving after work in downtown Seattle, and I saw a billboard outside a movie theater with the words, German New
Wave, and the title, Aguirre: The Wrath of God [a 1972 West German film directed by Werner Herzog--R.S.]. It made me
curious, so I went in. I was fortunate. I came out a different person. That two hours just blew me away. It restored my
sense of competence that I could be a filmmaker. This is what I thought a film should be. Film school would never teach
you to make those kind of shots. That was one of the crucial moments of my life. I had turned thirty, I thought I was
getting old, and three more years passed before I got the chance to work on a film project with a friend who asked me
to write a script for him. I went back to Taipei, and also visited Hong Kong for the first time, and the film was shot in
Japan. I got an offer to write and direct a made-for-TV movie in Taiwan, so I didn't go back to Seattle. After ten years my
mom was still calling and asking, 'When are you coming back to your regular job?'
Cineaste: What has been the response to Yi Yi in Taiwan?
Yang: It hasn't played there. I don't have any say in distribution. Distribution in Taiwan of locally made films just
doesn't exist any more. The negative image that the media has given to Taiwanese films really has settled in on the
general public. I'm not a hero. I'm pictured as the bad guy who killed Taiwanese cinema because my work would never
sell, because I'm only interested in film-festival awards. Filmmakers don't have time to deal with these things. I'd rather
spend time thinking about my scripts. I'd rather spend time with the people who finance my films, or telling them how
to market them. Distributors in Taiwan no longer put their money into production because they lost so much making the
wrong products. Distribution has lost all credibility about doing its own job. These business people belong to the past.
They don't understand the new market or the new films.

Cineaste: Do your films make money?

Yang: I think just about all of them have, if not in Taiwan. When you add everything up, none of them is in the red.
This has worked in line with my early philosophy, which is to distribute mainly overseas. To make a film in Taiwan the
costs are rather low, and we can find markets. The arithmetic is actually very simple, although in Taiwan the media
misinform the public about this. I hope that the positive international response to Yi Yi will somehow reach the
Taiwanese people. The media can't continue to paint a dark picture of something so bright. They're in the way. It's like
censorship. To me, it's worse than the actual censorship of the past. I hope internationally there's pressure on them to
be more liberal--especially the government. Film has created a very positive and progressive image of Taiwan, of which I
feel proud. I hope that the government can straighten out a few things so that filmmakers in the future will feel
encouraged, instead of discouraged. I'm a strong-willed person, so it doesn't really affect me, but many others couldn't
handle these damaging blows. Sometimes it tears everybody apart. It creates mistrust of others, instead of what it was
like in the early Eighties, when we banded together to form a force. The media know they can take us apart individually.
In the past people were thrown in jail. That was stupid, because it wasn't necessary. All you have to do is paint a dark
picture and nobody will hear what you're saying. This is what they're practicing right now. It's much worse. It calls for
much more courage to stand up to them now.
his year, as every year, the New York Times listed its critics' choices of the films and directors that should have been in
the running for an Oscar. Two of the three nominations were for Edward Yang and his film A One and a Two (Yi Yi). Few
people who have seen the film would question those nominations. The New York Times found it "sublime", the LA
Weekly described it as "a quiet masterpiece of emotion" and when it was shown recently in cinemas in LA people burst
into applause at the end.
YI YI interview
A One and a Two is the story of a Taiwanese family experiencing the punctuation marks of life from birth to marriage to
death. It deals with romance and rejection, jealousy and disappointment, optimism and alienation. Central to the film is
a dying grandmother, whom the family have been encouraged to talk to even though it is not clear if she can understand
what they are saying, and a small boy who likes to take photographs of the backs of people's heads so they can see the
half of life they normally miss.

This is Yang's seventh film but the first to have a proper international film release and the one that may finally bring his
work to wider audience. Born in China in 1947, Yang moved with his family to Taiwan as a child and was fortunate that
his father was a film buff. "My dad grew up in Shanghai and loved to go to the movies," says Yang, a self-effacing man,
sitting in a Beverly Hills coffee bar. "It was quite expensive and unusual, so every time I went I would tell my
schoolfriends what I had seen and then I started to draw the films so that more people could see them. After that, I
started to make up sequels and my own stories."
At the time Yang was growing up, Taiwan was anxious to forge good diplomatic relations and would distribute the kind
of European films that might not oth erwise have been seen there. "I remember I went with my sister to [Federico
Fellini's] 8, and only she and I and two bar-girls were there. The two bar-girls would keep complaining and saying, 'I can't
understand the story.' We were lucky - Robert Bresson's films were commercially released in Taiwan, too. None of my
French friends believe me when I tell them."
As a young man, Yang moved to the US to study electrical engineering at the University of Florida. His fascination with
cinema took him to the University of Southern California to study film. But he dropped out and worked in computer
design for the next seven years. "I had given up and said, 'I am not built for becoming a film-maker,' until one night when
I was driving downtown in Seattle and saw this sign outside a cinema saying 'German New Wave: Aguirre, the Wrath of
God' [the 1972 Werner Herzog film]. I went in and that turned me around."
He decided there and then that he had to, as they would say in Hollywood, pursue his dream. "I was telling this story
later to a friend in San Francisco during the film festival there and my friend said 'Turn around' and there was Werner
Herzog. We became good friends."
A friend from film school had already started to direct in Taiwan and knew that Yang had a lot of stories from the days
when they drew comic books together. Yang returned to his home territory and gave up computers for ever. "Mum was
really up set," he smiles, "but it was something I really wanted to do."
After working in television for a while, he made his own films. That Day, on the Beach (1983), Taipei Story (1985) and
The Terroriser (1986) all won him critical admiration but his breakthrough came in 1991 with A Brighter Summer Day.
Set in the 1960s, with a cold war backdrop, the four-hour film told the story of a teenager who falls in love with the
girlfriend of a gang leader. Two satires, A Confucian Confusion (1994) and Mahjong (1996), followed. In the meantime
his compatriot Hou Hsiao-Hsien had also been carving his own niche, making Cute Girl in 1980 and winning the critics'
award at the 1986 Berlin festival for The Time to Live and the Time to Die (1985).
Did they see themselves as part of a movement, a Taiwanese New Wave? "In the beginning, it was a collective effort.
Our generation was taking over and there was a new, more energetic kind of film-making. But after we made a name for
ourselves we had different directions to go in, and in the last 10 years it has been pretty much individual efforts."
A One and a Two has been in gestation for more than a decade, its origins lying in a friend's dying relative. He was in a
coma but the doctors felt he might benefit if people addressed him as if he could understand everything. "It was quite
overwhelming to me to talk to the person pretending he's normal. In that kind of situation you have to be very honest
not just to him but to yourself. That was in the 1980s but I knew I was too young to make the film then." Yang was then
in his late 30s. "I let it sit in my head so that all the details came in and settled, and when I finally proposed the story [to
the film's Japanese backers] two years ago, I felt I was ready."
One of the film's most memorable parts involves the obser vations of the small boy, played unselfconsciously by
Jonathan Chang. "I didn't think that much about that part over the years. Most of the details developed during the
writing because basically that character is the foundation of all the other characters, someone we all once were. Most of
the people I talk to share similar feelings, whether they are men or women. I think we were all once that way, with all
kinds of questions, and we didn't know which one was more philosophical than the other because we didn't have
answers to any of them."
Yang gives credit to his largely unknown cast for the success of the film. "The writing doesn't stop at the script; that's a
blueprint. There is still room with actors to accommodate their strengths and avoid their weaknesses. It's like a building -
it has to be built under one concept or it doesn't work. Taiwan does not have a big pool of actors, and Jonathan was only
seven at the time and I was looking for a 10-year-old. But he caught my casting director's eye and he said, 'Take a look at
this kid.' I said 'Gee!' I was worried whether he would understand the things I would ask him to do but he was so smart."
While Yang's work has always found a responsive audience in Taipei, Europe was the first territory overseas to welcome
it. "The London Film Festival in 1983 was the first moment that Taiwan's new cinema got a chance to be exposed to the
world. I did one segment of a film done by four young film-makers that was invited to the festival and I hand-carried the
tapes to London . . . After that, I think people realised what was happening and Derek Malcolm [the Guardian's film critic
at the time] came to Taipei."

Japan followed suit. But it took years before the west was prepared to give proper releases to Asian films that were not
exclusively concerned with martial arts. The success of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Wong Kar-Wai's In
the Mood for Love may push the doors wider open.
Yang is interested in exploring the world that the new technologies have created. "We have more and more things in
common than in the past, especially in the cities. In the last 10 years, I [have become] more familiar with the streets of
Tokyo and Hong Kong and some parts of Paris and LA than the rural areas of my own country." He has finished a script
about "a young kid who travels the world with just a cellphone and a credit card. Those two things are all you need now.
It's a new world and there are a lot of stories we can tell each other."
The success of A One and a Two has already led to new offers. "I feel like an athlete - all these clubs seeing if you would
like to join the team. There are new possibilities but I think it depends on whether my style fits into their game - and if it
does, it's wonderful." There had been approaches before, but at the time he felt that in Hollywood it was "bankers
making the decisions". He believes that it is easier now for an independent film-maker to have control, and mentions
David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino as two directors whose work he admires.
Yang hopes now to make a film in Seattle and, with the kind of budget previously unavailable to him, a second world war
story set in Taiwan. His homeland's ambiguous geo-politics is a constant preoccupation for Taiwanese film-makers.
"That's part of the reality so when you do a film that is genuine or authentic it has to have that element. I am an
optimistic person. I think something positive will come out of this situation . . . there are a lot of things in common
between [China and Taiwan] if we set aside the old ideologies."
Like the small boy with the camera in A One and a Two, Yang seems now to be in the perfect position to use film to show
people the parts of their lives that they normally miss.

HOU HSIAO HSIEN

“It is more important to observe and listen.” Despite the intense philosophical disposition many critics have discerned in
the work of Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien, the 68-year-old filmmaker often seems very uninterested in the
thematic choices behind his films. Instead, he often appeals to the tenet of cinematic realism. His work has been key in
defining it in contemporary terms — a use of long takes and master shots with subtle changes in both camera and
performances while avoiding traditional narrative exposition. More than that, Hou’s films have depended on accurate
historical locations and details, all expounding on the history of his small country (City of Sadness; The Puppetmaster;
Good Men, Good Women) and its present disposition (Millennium Mambo; the time-hopping Three Times).

The Assassin is certainly his most ambitious project, a wuxia epic set within the Tang Dynasty of 9th Century Mainland
China. The project, which Hou spent the last five years slowly shooting and editing (a description of his workflow can be
found here), won him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. Working with his regular DP Mark Lee, Hou
sets gorgeous, lusciously shot costumes and sets lavished in succulent reds and gold colors alongside sublimely green
and blue landscapes, while each long take (shot in Academy Ratio save one key sequence) uses careful changes in
composition of his actors to reveal essential plot information. Hou muse Shu Qi stars as a silent princess turned assassin
who, after failing to kill an important lord, returns to her homeland on a mission assigned by her mentor to murder her
cousin, now an important lord.

Typically for the director, the complexities of the political allegiances become less allegorical and more emotional
through the slow spooling out of exposition between reflective pauses. Hou rhythmically edits more than usual,
continually realigning his characters in relation to their spaces and ideologies within the chamber set pieces. More than
that, The Assassin features Hou’s most traditionally exciting sequences, using Stedicam movements into empty spaces to
suggest the present of the looming assassin, followed by quick-cut action sequences with skillfully choreographed fights.
These fights, however, make up a very little part of the film’s running time, which instead creates a languid space in
which characters both enact and disobey their historical tradition.

During his first visit to Los Angeles in almost a decade, Hou — a reflective man who slowly articulated his calculated
points in a straightforward tone — discussed his work over the phone (via translator) about creating an epic with an
attention to history and its particulars. This interview has been slightly edited for clarity.

Filmmaker: You’ve spoken how on each film you try and set formal limitations for yourself, and then search for creative
solutions. What limitations did you set for yourself on such an ambitious project?

Hou: I would say one of the biggest parameters I set for myself was that I wanted to ground this story in historical fact
and historical reality. The one thing I would emphasize is the original source material that inspired this movie — the
story of Yinniang — is a short story. It’s only about 1,000 Chinese characters. But that story itself was written in the Tang
Dynasty. The author was a contemporary of that era. Most of these stories, legends, and vignettes of the Tang Dynasty
were written by people of that era, and are writing about things that were true of that era. So they were referencing
actual historical facts and actual historical figures. For me, it was important to follow the route of realism and be faithful
to what was actually happening at the time.

So I extensively consulted historical reference materials: The Old Book of Tang, The New Book of Tang, The Zizhi
Tongjian. These are extensive historical reference books. The Zizhi Tongjian, for exampl,e was written by people of that
era, so it had records of all the emperors, the various dynasties — all these things were listed in these reference books.
So it was a matter of looking up these people, and figuring out who they were and what they did. Sometimes, in the
original short story, there’s maybe only a sentence or two referring to a particular individual. Princess Jiaxin, for
example; when I found her initially there was just a one sentence description of her. But we were able to look her up in
the other historical reference materials. So once you start doing this kind of research, you get a sense of who these
people were and what this era was like. Then you have a parameter, and a limit in which you can create a story, so you
don’t just go all over the place and become very fantastical and there’s no boundary to what you are doing. This was
what I was most conscious of while making this film: to ground everything as much as I can in historical facts and reality.

Filmmaker: While many of your films have depended on funding from Europe and Japan, The Assassin is the first film
you’ve made that’s proportionally dependent on financing from mainland China. This has been a trend with many of
your contemporaries, like Tsai Ming-liang, Johnnie To, and Wong Kar-wai. Can you talk about your collaboration with
financing in mainland China and if that influenced the direction of the project at all?

Hou: The Chinese funders who backed this movie are the ones who also produced The Grandmaster by Wong Kar-wai.
The initial agreement is that they would back half the movie, so for the rest I went to places around the world: Europe,
Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia. In many countries, I worked with old partners, people I’ve previously
collaborated with on projects. So in Japan, I went to Shochiku, who I’ve worked with in the past. It was not difficult to set
up the arrangement, because once I sat down with these various partners and financers, I was able to get a sense of
what they wanted and what I wanted to do. The discussion itself was very easy.

The Chinese company, which is called Sil-Metropole, is an official entity within Mainland China. As to whether there or
not there was any financial pressure to make me do things differently — not really. I think people who work with me
know the kind of movies I make and the kind of filmmaker I am. So when I made The Assassin, I went about it the way I
always go about it, which is I do what is true to myself and true to my intuition, and ground everything within the
philosophy of realism.

Filmmaker: The formal construction of your films has always remained one of the most crucial aspects of your
filmmaking, especially in regards to using the Steadicam long takes that most you first began employing on Flowers of
Shanghai with Mark Lee as your cinematographer. However, The Assassin has many more edits than usual for your work,
in both the wuxia sequences but also the chamber drama sequences. What was your plan in knowing how and where to
cut as opposed to setting up simply a long take? Did you plan it ahead of time or figure it out on set?

Hou: The way I did this movie with Mark Lee was the way I always work. We just did long takes every time. So the
decisions you’re referring to, those were only made during the editing process. I tried to preserve the long take as much
as I could, and I would only edit if it would clarify certain things, if the way the film was assembled demanded that I cut.
Otherwise, I would just preserve the long take. The camera was actually only in one position, and we would only change
angles or move the camera around if we somehow felt this was necessary. Otherwise, we would not bother with that.

The only things that required a lot of cutting was the action scenes. The reason why that’s the case is the actors were
not professional fighters or martial artists, and not used to doing this kind of thing. So we had to break everything up
into bits and pieces just to help them out. But if they were actually professional fighters and martial artists — people
who are very good at this thing — I may have well as shot the action scenes in one continuous take as well. Who knows?

Filmmaker: I noted that you take both an editor and a director of editing, and that this was your first time you edited on
a digital medium as opposed to a flatbed for celluloid. Can you explain the two editors and discuss how the new process
changed your editing decisions?

Hou: In terms of my editing philosophy, the fact that we edited digitally made no difference on the way I would edit. I
think the most important part of editing digitally is that it makes the work move much faster. Before we were editing on
flatbeds and Steenbecks, but editing digitally allowed us to put the scene together much faster than we used to. The
director of editing is my old editor, Liao Ching-song, but the actual editor of the film, who I was putting the film together
with, is a woman named Huang Chih-chia. She was actually my script supervisor — she was the person on set
documenting and recording everything. She knew the film inside out: the flow of it, the parts of it, what was in each
scene and so on. And she’s also very young, and young people are very good with new technology, so she was very
capable of using new technology and digital media to put the film together. So I worked with her to put the film
together, and then Liao Ching-song came in to supervise the editing process for once we put a cut together for certain
sequences or things we wanted to show him. If everyone felt good about it, we would move on.

Filmmaker: The colors themselves seems more artificial than in a lot of your work. I know a lot of the costumes were
made with dyes you purchased in India, but even the grass seems to be painted over, and the blue of the nighttime has a
saturated quality. How did you achieve the color effects here? Did you use filters or change anything through post-
production?

Hou: Most of what you see in the film is what we shot. We didn’t use that many filters. What made it really arresting is
we put a lot of thought into the production design, the costume, and how we wanted to light the scene. So for the
interior scenes, even though they are sets that we constructed, these were all constructed outside so we could utilize
natural light. For the scenes outdoors, we were using natural light, and then we would occasionally set up a light here
and there to make up if it was not brought enough or we needed to make up or compensate for something. Otherwise,
we were trying to use natural light as much as possible. So the indoor scenes — a lot of these night scenes that take
place indoors — we lit them using low candle light, these very beautiful things that you saw. The silk curtains, the
clothing, and a lot of the materials that we would have on set—these were purchased, and this silk has a very special
reflective quality with a very interesting effect. It is something I wanted to use and had experimented with when making
Flowers from Shanghai and shooting interior with these materials.

Filmmaker: There is a breathtaking moment at the end of the film in which Yinniang meets with Princess Jaixin on a
mountainscape, and near the end of the scenes these clouds engulf the valley below. Did this moment take a long time
to film to capture that perfect effect at the right moment?

Hou: What you see in the film is what happened; there’s no CGI, it’s all natural and exactly as it happened. This was shot
in Hubei province in Mainland China, in an area called Shennongjia, which is about 2,700 meters above sea level. So it’s
very high up and it was a very humid day, so there were cloud after cloud just coming in waves through the mountain
and the valley. So honestly, it didn’t take us very long at all to shoot the scene; it was just happening like that. So we just
showed up and shot it. Had it not been a very humid day without clouds, I may have still been able to utilize it. It just so
happens there were clouds, it was humid, and so it was the kind of scene we ended up utilizing for the film.

Filmmaker: Many of the actors speak an older dialect of Chinese Mandarin in the film, which is much more stylized and
pronounced than how dialogue usually appears in your movies. Since you usually improvise your dialogue, how did you
work with actors differently when working with such a unique style of pronunciation?

Hou: The kind of dialogue you hear in the film is this Classical Chinese, which is very different from the kind of thing you
hear nowadays in Chinese-speaking territories. I don’t know why this is, but Classical Chinese for me has been very easy.
For some people, Classical Chinese has always been very difficult. I don’t know why. I’ve read a lot. But for me, Classical
Chinese has always come very easily — I don’t have any problem reading it, or writing it, or even saying it. So this was all
written in advance of the script. So with the actors it was very simple. We didn’t rehearse or practice. I just gave the
script to the actors and they would just memorize the dialogue, show up on set, and do it. That’s truly the extent of our
preparation.

I didn’t do anything like have the actors memorize the dialogue and then come and say it for me to hear it and test it
out. We didn’t really do that. For some of the court scenes with extended dialogue, we had mainland Chinese actors,
and they are very good at this. They would memorize the line in advance, show up, and say it so it was very natural and
compelling. It was most different for the Taiwanese actors, because we have an accent and people talking in a way that’s
different. So for them, it was more work to memorize this dialogue. But nonetheless, there were no tests or rehearsal.
They memorized it, they showed up, and they did it.

Filmmaker: On a more philosophical level, many of your films have done with the relationship between marginal figures
and the greater role of history. I think about City of Sadness, The Puppetmaster, the stories in Three Times…so many of
the characters seem trapped by their role in history, and in part, their belief in not being able to create change so they
end up enacting the fates assigned at birth In terms of history, one thinks of assassins as agents of change —but your
character ultimately betrays the purpose that her higher-ups have called for her to do. I feel like this creates a more
humanist vision of history based in a sentiment only hinted at in your previous film. Was there anything conscious in
your decision to create a character who is able to transcend historical choices?

Hou: I would say that the Tang Dynasty was a much freer era. I would say that it’s actually hundreds of time freer than in
some of the other eras I’ve depicted in my previous films. I feel the Tang Dynasty was an era of a lot of freedom —
freedom of thought, of expression, and so on. Compared to Taiwan for example, which I’ve dealt with in my previous
films, Taiwan is a smaller place, and it’s easier for certain political ideologies and political control to be carried over and
seep through the population into ordinary people, and it just happens more easily. While back in the Tang Dynasty,
there was more space; the country was bigger and there were less people. So it was a freer, and kind of a nice time
actually in my estimation. I feel like nowadays, we talk about freedom of personal choice and consciousness, but a lot of
times we are influenced by all sorts of ideologies that we ourselves are not aware of. While I feel that the Tang Dynasty
at the time, it was a pretty surprising degree of freedom that we might not have expected.
he Assassin, the latest work from Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, was a long time in the works, but the wait was
worth it. Mournful, exacting and mysteriously moving, it stylistically slips right into his stunning body of work.

Starting out in romantic melodramas in the early ’80s, by the end of that decade he was producing some of the most
innovative and acclaimed movies of the decade, including 1985’s A Time to Live, a Time to Die and 1989’s A City of
Sadness. From there on in, Hou was in the business of making great movies, covering a swathe of eras, styles, countries
and genres. This one is his personal take on the martial arts movie.

LWLies: What do you think is the hardest thing to capture on film?

Hou: The hardest thing to capture is a true reflection of a character’s feelings. That’s why I never rehearse. I just set the
scene and put the actors into an environment where they can act unconsciously, rather than practice and practice, or
apply technique. That is not true. It’s not real. Sometimes the actors can get there – to those feelings – in just one take,
sometimes not, so I’ll shoot another scene. I won’t tell the actors if it’s good or not, I’ll just say ‘next scene.’ Then we’ll
try it again another day, to see if the feelings I want to capture are ready to come out then.

What are the qualities you look for in an actor?

With experience, I can tell just through a conversation whether someone will make a good actor or not. I first saw Shu Qi
in a TV commercial and set up a meeting with her agent. She was really young – early twenties – and the first thing she
said to me was, ‘So, I know you’re a famous director, but…’ It was like she wanted to challenge me. I found that
fascinating. She was really cool and I wanted to work with her. On Millennium Mambo, I hardly spoke to her, I just put
her in these situations to see how she’d react, what her instincts were. I wanted her to show me her essence.

Didn’t you consider a career as an actor initially?

I’d be too self-conscious. I’d never make a good actor. You need to reflect character unconsciously, I’d be too self-aware.

You also talk about your love for singing in Olivier Assays’ documentary, HHH – Un Portrait de Hou Hsiao-Hsien. The film
finishes with quite a karaoke performance from you.

I don’t think I’d make a great singer. I entered a singing competition at university, but nothing came out when I was on
stage. I couldn’t make a sound, I was too self-conscious.

You explicitly quote other filmmakers in a number of your films. In 1983’s The Boys from Fengkuei, you feature a scene
from Rocco and his Brothers. Was Visconti a big influence on you then?

I saw Rocco when it was first released. Boys from Fengkuei came out in the heyday of Taiwanese commercial cinema.
Myself and Edward Yang would spend a lot of time during that period discussing Italian Neorealism, the New German
Cinema, the French New Wave… We were really influenced by these New Cinema movements, which informed Boys
from Fengkuei. That scene was shot in Taipei – the interiors, I mean – and we asked the cinema to play something. That
was the film they had there that day.

People have been talking about The Assassin as your first fight film, but there are numerous fight scenes throughout
your films, especially the autobiographical ones.

There were a lot of gangs where I grew up. At North Gate, there were the 24 Blue Eagles, and at West Gate there was
City Temple, which I belonged to. It was a tradition in that rural area in southern Taiwan, and rivalries had been
developing for generations. My uncle and his friends would be part of one group, while the younger generation would
be part of another. There was another gang called 15 Wolves, and the biggest fight was between them and the 24 Blue
Eagles, in the park at night. It was better to fight at night, under the cover of darkness. We’d fight with home-made
samurai swords, the eldest at the front with the biggest swords. Us younger ones would be at the back with bricks, but
we’d run to the front to throw them. You could see sparks coming off the swords when they’d fight. There were a lot of
drug issues too, especially among the younger generation. A lot of my friends died that way.

How did you get away from that environment?

I didn’t graduate from high school, but I had to do my military service, which was compulsory. Those two years kept me
away from the gangs, but when I came back, my father, who worked in Kaohsiung county government sent me to the
local police station to be disciplined. I ran away to Taipei the next day, where I started working on an assembly line and
tried to pass my university exam, which I just about passed. So I was able to escape by going to art college.

You’ve spoken previously of your interest in documenting masculinity in cinema, and yet so many of your later films –
including The Assassin – are female-centric. How did this shift in perspective come about?

I’d usually write a character based on the specific qualities of the actor, which in later years I’ve found has come more
easily with women, who have a stronger presence, like Shu Qi. I’d worked with Jack Gao for a long time, focussing on his
masculine qualities. The young boy in Boys from Fengkuei too, he was ferocious, and just like his character. Even though
he’s from that background, he lacks the kind of fascinating charm I find in female characters.

So if we ever find ourselves in a situation where we need a home-made Samurai sword, what’s your advice?

When I needed one, I’d go to one of the eight alleys near the temple where I grew up. There was an iron shop in one of
them, owned by my friend’s father, so we’d look for a long piece of iron in the shape of a sword. Short ones were okay,
long ones were better. Unfortunately in Taiwan, there’s no tradition of making proper samurai swords, so we had to
make them ourselves with what we found.