At last a successor to Kurosawa, successful in his own right...

Rating: 10/10 (5 March 2006)

There's not much that cannot be said in praise for this director and not anything that deletes from a masterpiece like Crouching Tiger... Despite a relatively small number of films listed in IMDb, the actual list of nominations and awards given to Ang Lee's films speaks for itself - lately in connection with the Academy Awards late last night which yielded three well-deserved prizes for Brokeback Mountain.
It is good to see a director who is in full command of everything, who has a strong sense of poetry and who communicates true epic grandness on a scale that can be used at its full advantage whether the film is set in the Far East (Crouching Tiger...) or in the "Wild" West of USA (Brokemack Mountain). I think the greatest impression I have from these two films is a strong and warm feeling of humanity and frailty seen through an epic dimension similar to that of Akiro Kurosawa's last films, with no signs of coyness and no cloying sentimentality - Ang Lee has a straightforward approach to human suffering that can appeal to anyone, anywhere, as well as a sense of humour that gives the audience just the right degree of distance without any feeling of estrangement.
Having been a Kurosawa devotee for most of my adult life (I'm in my sixties) I was greatly relieved when, after seeing Crouching Tiger..., I could lean back and know that the Japanese master of the cinema at last had a true and worthy successor. Brokeback Mountain confirmed this impression fully.
And I'm sure that together with many other cinema-goers I can look forward to his next venture, convinced that whatever subject matter, setting and era he might choose, we can expect something truly original and spectacular (in the true sense of that word) and at the same time an intimate and personal experience...