Some of why I love Ang Lee

I've just rewatched Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility. It's one of my favorite movies, partly because of the juxtaposition of director and material, which is unexpectedly perfect. You wouldn't think that the Taiwanese director of Eat, Drink, Man, Woman would be a likely choice to direct a Jane Austen story, but Sense and Sensibility is all about restraint and longing and propriety and social codes, and Ang Lee is very good with those things.

He conveys some of that longing by putting a lot of distance between the characters and the camera, and by putting te characters in vast landscapes. His movies are always gorgeous in that way.

( Pretty screencaps. )