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Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee returns to Beijing with his new breakthrough effort "Life of Pi," Nov. 2, 2012 [Sina.com.cn]

Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee returned to Beijing with his new breakthrough effort "Life of Pi," exploring and integrating the spiritual philosophies of both Oriental and Western worlds, utilizing the most advanced 3D visual technology on the big screen.

The Taiwan-born American director, who has "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Brokeback Mountain" on his resume, attended a press conference today and showed off select footage rather than screening the entire film. The vivid, dazzling and breathtaking footage impressed on-site reporters.

"Life of Pi," an upcoming 3D film based on the 2001 novel of the same title by Yann Martel, is scheduled to release on Nov. 21, 2012 in North America, and Nov. 22 on the Chinese mainland. The film tells the story of Pi, a 16-year-old Indian boy and the sole survivor of a sinking freighter, who finds himself on a lifeboat for an adventure with a Bengal tiger.

"This is the most difficult movie I've ever shot," Lee told the press in Beijing, the city he has not visited for more than four years.

"I touched all the complicated things," he explained. "I have been busy doing this film for three-and-a-half years, and I just handed over the final cut to the film company two week ago. It was not only difficult from an engineering perspective, but it was also very spiritual as well."

He continued, "To shoot a film, there were several rules like: no children, no animals, and no water. Because they are so difficult to control. But in this film, I used them all, and I used 3D," Lee added, "The film is very expensive, but it has strong philosophical and enlightenment aspects. For me, this is the important challenge."

Suraj Sharma, who played Pi in the film, is a newbie without much acting experiences, Lee said, but he appreciated his performance. "He was like a little living Buddha, who needed awakening," Lee said.

He admitted the animals were hard to handle. He revealed he had four tigers on-site, and he learned tigers' behaviors during the process. Visual effects production companies also helped create digital tigers according to the script, but Lee demanded the effects people not to simulate tiger behavior: it had to be natural.

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