Ang Lee

By RICHARD CORLISS

So Ang Lee is America's best film director, eh? Best--well, fine--but American? Lee, who was born and raised in Taiwan; who brings a very Mandarin delicacy to his subjects; who has shot most of his features in distant climes (Taipei for Pushing Hands and Eat Drink Man Woman, rural England for Sense and Sensibility, mainland China for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon); who has never made a movie in Hollywood; and whose name, correctly put, is Lee Ang...That Ang Lee?

Yes, America gets to claim him--as he claimed it 24 years ago, when he went to college in Illinois. Soon he was in New York City, studying film and assisting another Lee (Spike). Now 46, he still edits his films there and lives in Westchester with his wife Jane and their two children.

This dimpled, soft-spoken gent is proving again what has always been true: that American cinema is nourished by the artistry and vision of foreigners (Chaplin and Garbo, Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder). Lately it has been the Asians' turn to show us how films can kick higher or probe deeper. Lee's films do both.

He makes art films that entertain and enthrall. A cosmopolitan chameleon, Lee seems at home in any culture while viewing it with an outsider's ironic acuity. Often his theme is a divided family, or a man estranged from his best instincts. Lee doesn't look for heroes or villains; he finds enough shades of courage and compromise in every heavy heart. Even Crouching Tiger is grounded in the ache of unexpressed, unattainable love. Then it explodes like a Chinese firecracker on the Fourth of July.

In a career that keeps maturing and surprising, Lee is about to direct his first Hollywood film--The Incredible Hulk. An outsider with amazing powers: he could be a very American hero. He could be Ang Lee.