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But Lee has loftier goals, especially for the release of the film in Canada and the U.S.
"It has become a mission to break through that subtitles barrier," Lee tells The Sun, "and hopefully we will find a way to get out of the art-house ghetto. That's the ambition."
The 46-year-old Taiwanese-American filmmaker has sterling credentials that include Sense And Sensibility, The Ice Storm, Ride With The Devil and two Chinese-language Oscar nominees, The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman.
Crouching Tiger, which opens here on Friday, won the coveted People's Choice Award as the audience favourite at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. So the potential is there for a cultural crossover.
The US$12-million film plays in Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles. With few exceptions, such as Roberto Begnini's Italian-language Life Is Beautiful, subtitles are suicide for films in general release in North America.
While the modest budget and the international success of Crouching Tiger means that there is little risk left for the filmmakers, Lee still wants to stimulate change.
Lee, of mainland Chinese heritage, was born in Taiwan in 1954 and immigrated to the U.S. in 1978. He still lives in the States, in the New York area, with his wife Jane Lin and their two young sons, Mason and Han.
"I grew up with subtitles," Lee says in his characteristic, low-key, hushed-voice manner that is not to be mistaken for weakness. He is resolute.
"It really would make me very happy if I could break the barrier of subtitles here among the general public.
"In art houses and film festivals, it's not a problem. Uptown, downtown, it's not a problem. In a lot of metropolitan areas, such as in Canada, it is not a problem. Canada, I think, is one of the most open-minded places. But in the multiplexes with a younger audience, it's a problem."
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has an advantage over most foreign-language films, Lee says. And that is the remarkable blend and balance of genres and styles, as well as an internationally recognized cast that includes Chinese legend Chow Yun Fat and the Malaysian-born martial-arts star Michelle Yeoh. She was Pierce Brosnan's super-femme sidekick in the 007 film Tomorrow Never Dies.
Crouching Tiger, which is set in ancient China and shot in a series of spectacular locations there, is adapted primarily from the fourth part of a sprawling series penned by Chinese novelist Wang Du Lu.
The story is "insanely complex" according to American co-writer James Schamus, Lee's career-long collaborator. Even though there is only about one two-hundredths of the original novels left in the screenplay, Schamus says, "It reads like a year full of soap operas on fast forward."
In one of Lee's written essays about the project, he called the film "a kind of a dream of China, a China that probably never existed except in my boyhood fantasies in Taiwan."
The screen is alive with scenes of mythology, Tao philosophy, political intrigue, chivalry, adventure, romance and breathtaking martial-arts fight scenes that were choreographed by a master of the genre, Yuen Wo-Ping, who did The Matrix for Hollywood and established Jackie Chan's reputation with The Legend Of Drunken Master.
"It helps," Lee says about his elaborate, sword-based martial-arts sequences, many of which involve thrilling wire work that allows the actors to scale rooftops, do gravity-defying flips and even fight in the tops of tall trees.
Youthful audiences can relate, he says. "And the romance is really helping among younger people, too."
Despite the gloom felt by many small distributors, who dread the growing power of mainstream Hollywood and believe that the market for foreign films is shrinking in North America, Lee is hopeful.
"When I was a film student," he says of his masters work in cinema at New York University, "it never occurred to me that I could make movies here. I had never seen any Chinese film released here other than in Chinatown, not even in an art house.
"In the course of 15 years, I find the world has become more embracing. It's progressing. Now we'll see if we can break into the multiplexes."
While the martial-arts sequences might attract youthful audiences, they should not scare away more adult viewers, Schamus says. The fights are intricately woven into the drama and even the romantic subplots.
"We wanted to do something different from every other martial-arts movie you've ever seen. So we had to make sure the drama had equal weight with the martial arts.
"In order to do that, you run a great risk. On one hand, you have Drunken Master with the great Jackie Chan. On the other hand, you have Hamlet. What they were not going to let us do is Drunken Hamlet. It was a real high-wire act. At least, it felt that way to us. To me, maintaining that balance was two years of work."
The actors were as thrilled as audiences are now. "It was such a fulfilling experience," Yeoh says.
Yet it was the biggest challenge of her life. "I mean, we did go through the whole rollercoaster of it being a wonderful, fun time -- to it being incredibly painful with heartbreaking moments."
Yeoh blew out her knee, tearing her knee ligament, at the end of the first fight sequence she shot. That meant surgery back in the U.S. and a month off the shoot in China, where Lee had to film sequences that did not involve her key character. She returned and took on the rest of her fights.
"We wanted it to be an art film, so it would be taken seriously," Yeoh says of the project. "At the same time, we wanted the martial-arts element to come across, because that is the visual stimulant, the entertainment. It is part of our culture. How do we get all of that together with the historical and the romantic elements? That is the genius of Ang Lee."
The genius himself is looking into the future on a global scale. He worries about the stranglehold the U.S. has on world cinema. Yet he is cautiously optimistic. "It is definitely more open culturally now than when I first came to the States," he says. Lee, a master chef who does most of the cooking for his family, uses a food metaphor to illustrate his point.
"Then," he says of his arrival in the U.S. in 1978, "I was happy just to find scallions in the supermarket." Now he can walk in and buy bok choy and any number of other Asian specialties. So things really are improving, he says.
"I think as globalization is happening more and more, at the same time people cherish their individual cultures more."