For these three, it’s a matter of choice

As the distinctions between studio and independent productions have blurred, so have the lines separating filmmakers whose work belongs in the art house from those bound for the multiplex. From film to film, some directors move from one budget size to another, while others prefer to genre-hop to escape the styles of their previous work.

Perhaps trying to avoid the midcareer drift and bloat that has undone so many directors whose early work found them drafted into a studio-subsidized malaise, filmmakers Ang Lee, Fernando Meirelles and Danny Boyle have all made conscious decisions to avoid being pigeonholed by budget, style or genre. And each has fashioned a departure for himself in 2005.

Lee, coming off the complicated, effects-heavy shoots for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Hulk,” found himself rather tired. So he returned to a project he had previously flirted with: making an adaptation of E. Annie Proulx’s short story “Brokeback Mountain.” Even with the media storm that came with casting Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger as Wyoming ranch hands who engage in an ongoing love affair, Lee found the small budget and manageable production appealing.

“That’s half the reason,” said Lee by phone from his upstate New York editing room, where he is finishing the film. “Most projects I choose not because of the budget or [because] I have a plan to go back and forth, but because I’m attracted to the story. I like to have the capacity to go from big to small. My first picture, ‘Pushing Hands,’ cost like $400,000, and the “Hulk” was nearly $160 million. I like to jump around and not get locked into anything. Not everybody gets to do that -- it’s a privilege I’ve earned. But I won’t do something just because it’s big or small. It’s because I love it and think I can handle it.”

Lee’s seen the positive aspects of both kinds of movies. Unexpectedly declaring “Hulk” his “most personal” film, he elaborates by saying, “It was ultimate freedom. People think low-budget films mean integrity and freedom and big-budget is a sellout. To me, that’s not necessarily true. A small-budget film really needs discipline. You have to get your days done, shoot everything quickly, you work under a lot of restrictions.

“ ‘Hulk,’ I just do whatever I want to do and nobody says ‘boo.’ They all praise me and keep boosting my ego. I pretty much did anything I wanted or needed or dreamed of.”

IN THE MIDDLE

For Meirelles, the Brazilian director of the unexpected 2003 Oscar nominee “City of God,” his follow-up represents a middle position between a self-financed film like “City” and the studio-backed pictures that would seem the natural next step in his career trajectory.

“I had a lot of offers from big studios in the last two years,” Meirelles said by phone from his home in Sao Paulo, “but I’m still afraid of getting involved with the studios. I know how to make a film, but I don’t know how to relate to a lot of real people, sharing ideas. This was a smaller project, smaller scale and more control, so I felt it was easier to get involved with.... I felt safe.”

That project is “The Constant Gardener,” an adaptation of a John Le Carre thriller starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, which Meirelles refers to as an “existential thriller, with a love story.” For him, the choice to direct the picture was a logical one, dealing with philosophical issues rather than the social concerns of “City of God” while grappling with how Western corporations do business in Africa.

Even though he did not write the script and was not the first director attached, Meirelles believes he has put his imprint on the picture. “One thing I think is interesting is if this film had been made by Mike Newell, who left the project to do something else, he would do this story from the first-world viewpoint, a really British film about a British guy in Africa.

“I think I read the story from the other side, the Kenyan side, so it feels different from what it should be. I identify more with the Kenyans than the Brits. I’m from a Third World country, and I understand what happens there. It wasn’t a wholly conscious thing, but I think I protected the Kenyans because I identify myself with them.”

INDULGING CHANGE

Few directors have been as hard to pin down as Boyle. Since the success of the contemporary youth-cult landmark “Trainspotting,” he has made a musical, a psychedelic allegory and a horror picture. His new film, “Millions,” reportedly made for less than $10 million, is an oddball hybrid of a children’s story and a heist picture, sort of a kiddie-pageant remake of his earlier “Shallow Grave.”

Explaining what keeps him hopping from genre to genre, Boyle says: “The reason to change, really, is indulgence. From a business point of view it’s insane. If you do something well, you should do it again. ‘Let’s make real money now,’ that’s what the agent says. But as you get more experience, you learn technically how to deceive people, to make it look expensive when it’s cheap, to get yourself out of a problem you’ve created for yourself. There are tricks you can use.

“When you make your first film, you don’t have any of these tools, and that’s why your first film is often in many ways your best film. And you’ve got to get back to that naivete.”

Moving from big to small, style to style, genre to genre, all three directors maintain that they are interested first and foremost in storytelling and connecting with an audience. The rest is simply part of the process. As Lee says, “For me, I cannot divide the difficulties by budget. It’s different each time. Each movie has its own problems, but a movie is still a movie. It’s like a child -- they’re different, but you have to pay attention just the same.”