Director of photography Peter Pau, HKSC lends a soaring, poetic grandeur to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a mythic and wildly romantic martial-arts epic.
A smash hit at the Cannes and Toronto film festivals last year, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is as wonderfully deceptive as its title suggests. Set in the 19th century, the film presents a complex romantic drama enlivened by the trappings of a Hong Kong-style, period martial-arts epic. The plot is laced with intrigue: legendary warrior Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun Fat) entrusts his jade sword, the Green Destiny, to his beloved, Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh). When the weapon is stolen by a mysterious and elusive figure, blazing action ensues as the duo attempt to recover the relic and unveil the nefarious forces behind its theft. Meanwhile, both try to share their wisdom with Jen Yu (Zhang Ziyi), a young, headstrong noblewoman who becomes entangled in the crime. Jen is torn between two desires: whether to live the giang hu (martial-arts life) of her mentors, or return to the arms of her true love, a long-haired bandit named Lo (Chang Chen).
Director Ang Lee has described making this $15 million film, which was shot on location in China, as a "boyhood fantasy come true." To bring his poetic vision to life, he enlisted some of Hong Kong’s most talented artists, including director of photography Peter Pau, HKSC, whose life boasts its own share of intrigue. When he was a young man, the Hong Kong native traveled to study in Canton, China, in the mid- 1960s. "My father sent me there for the discipline," Pau explains with a laugh, "but the following year, the Cultural Revolution began and I could not leave." In fact, 12 years would pass before he was able to return home. At age 27, Pau determined that filmmaking was his calling, and with his family’s support, he enrolled in film school at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he earned a bachelor’s degree.
After returning to Hong Kong, Pau directed and photographed his first feature, Temptation of Dance (1984). "That gained me a lot of attention from other directors, who wanted me to work with them as a director of photography," Pau recalls. Since then, he has photographed (or co-photographed) more than two dozen pictures, including The Greatest Lover, Savior of the Soul, The Killer, To Be Number One, Swordsman, Misty (which he also directed) and Anna Magdalena. "I’ve been lucky to practice [my craft] often," Pau submits. "The Hong Kong film industry grew up with limited budgets and limited amounts of production time, so we had to learn how to work with great precision. It was good training."
Pau’s work has earned him numerous accolades, including three Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Cinematography and nine more nominations. One of these prizes was for The Bride With White Hair (1993), an epic period fantasy concerning a noble swordsman who romances a beautiful assassin. Opulently photographed in contrasting hues, the picture was directed by Ronny Yu, with whom Pau would later work on The Phantom Lover and Warriors of Virtue. The duo would also make their Hollywood debut together with the comedic horror pic Bride of Chucky (see AC Oct. ’98). Recently, Pau further established himself in the U.S. market by photographing Dracula 2000.
During his first meeting with Lee about Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Pau asked the director to name some of the Hong Kong-style action films that had impressed him visually. "Ang told me, ’None of them,’" the cameraman recalls, laughing. "He was serious! Naturally, I became concerned, because he had never done an action movie like this before, and he also didn’t have any references from action movies that he liked." The filmmakers soon began building a visual approach of their own.
Interestingly, Pau did not apply his expertise with elaborate, richly colored lighting a key device he has used on other many other action-oriented fantasy films to Crouching Tiger. He explains why: "We make a lot of period action films in Hong Kong, and we generally use hard light and a full range of colors. We control them very carefully, often using extreme blacks and pure whites and mixing deep reds and blues with lots of fog and smoke effects. We also use a lot of filter effects. But that dynamic approach did not work for Crouching Tiger, because the storytelling approach was very dramatic; using those techniques would have overdramatized the film and taken the audience out of the story and away from the characters. Instead, we wanted a look that was realistic and comfortable, so the first thing I discussed with Ang was using a low-contrast visual approach with desaturated colors."
Lee, Pau and Tim Yip, the film’s production/costume designer, followed this "Chinese watercolor" aesthetic throughout the film, avoiding extreme hues and contrasts. The filmmakers also devised a subtle, three-act color scheme designed to mirror the narrative’s ebbs and flows. "For nearly the first half of the film, we created a normal look that was slightly more yellow and less magenta, in conjunction with a mild, cool moonlight," Pau explains. "We then made an abrupt change to a golden red-yellow for a long flashback sequence set in the desert, where we see Jen’s adventures with her lover. The colors are so strong because her memories of the love she has there are the most passionate thing in her life. Finally, we infused the final third of the film with a moody green hue to dramatize the southern part of China, where some of the action takes place within a bamboo forest. The ending is a confusion of green as things become more tragic. [That effect was created] via production design and color timing."
Exceptions to these rules occur during scenes set in and around the Forbidden City, a location that generally features "vibrant reds, green greens and blue blues. We decided to restrain the color and remove the blues, which I felt seemed too modern. We also made the reds more creamy and more like burgundy."
Pau also broke from his general approach during a scene in which two aging noblemen unsheathe the Green Destiny sword, allowing the audience to see the jade weapon for the first time. As the cool moonlight hits its ornately inscribed surface, an emerald-green glow is reflected in the men’s eyes, suggesting the blade’s magical power. "We did that with a small daylight-balanced Kino Flo unit that had one green-spiked tube in it," Pau says. "By just having one green tube among the blue ones, the green light was subtle enough to not be too obvious. Ang wanted the Green Destiny to have a magical quality because we needed a touch of magic, and our entire drama involves a chase around [the sword]. This effect was only done in one scene."
Abandoning his usual hard-light style, Pau used only the softest illumination on his performers. His fixtures were usually aimed through layers of Rosco 3030 full grid cloth "to get the softest light possible, particularly in scenes between Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi, because their beauty was so important to the drama in many scenes."
Also, contrary to the established aesthetics of martial-arts movies, Lee and Pau determined that Crouching Tiger should be framed in 2.35:1 widescreen; most films in the genre are shot in 1.85:1 in order to frame the performers’ full bodies, allowing the audience the best view of the action. Lee had had a positive experience with the anamorphic format on his previous film, Ride With the Devil (see AC Nov. ’99), and he and Pau felt that Crouching Tiger’s dramatic scenes, including the flashback sequence to be filmed in the China-Xinjiang Desert, would be best served in widescreen.
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