Raxivace wrote:210. A Brighter Summer Day (AKA The Youth Killing Incident on Guling Street, 1991, Dir. Edward Yang)
Yay! It took a while for you to get around to it, but it was definitely worth the wait. Glad you agree about its masterpiece status. Here's what I wrote back when I finally got to see the Criterion blu-ray (copied from our IMDb documents so the formatting is wonky. I've fixed it AMAP):
A Brighter Summer Day - Edward Yang -- 10/10
It's incredibly apropos that, at one point in the film, the ex--gang leader Honey, after his return from exile,
mentions War & Peace as the one novel whose lessons about the martial arts (as in war) stayed with him;
apropos because ABSD is one of the truly novelistic films with (reportedly) over 100 speaking parts, and the
way it creates its epic sweep through an abundance of interrelated details rather than its sheer length or visual
canvass—ala Lawrence of Arabia, by comparison—vividly recalls Tolstoy's masterpiece.
Consequentially, the plot is too complex to easily summarize, but I'll try my best. It focuses on teenager, Xiao
Si'r, and his family of Taiwanese immigrants in the 1960s, after having escaped from Mainland communist
China. The sense of dispossession, alienation, and loss of identity is palpable throughout the film, and is
dramatically communicated primarily through the warring street-gangs—The Little Park Boys and 217s. Si'r is
more of a loner, preferring to read and write in his journal rather than join the gangs, but when he falls in love
with Ming, the girlfriend of Honey, he finds himself inevitably drawn into their world of violence.
This summary, however, does a gross injustice to the film's numerous (often key) supporting characters, as
well as the crucially important historical setting. The title, after all, gets its name from the (misunderstood?)
lyrics of the Elvis Presley song, Are You Lonesome Tonight, and the pervasiveness of American culture—the
music, the clothes, the movies, the James Dean swagger—provides a rich socio-cultural context.
Criterion's release features a superbly insightful feature--length commentary by Tony Rayns.
It's almost a must-listen for anyone who watches the film, if only for how Rayns details these contextual elements that Yang only
hints at. Rayns also mentions that before becoming a filmmaker, director Edward Yang studied computer
science. Rayns (rightfully) claims that this accounts for Yang's balance of a left--brained objectivity and analysis
and right--brained subjectivity and empathy; I'd also argue it accounts for his approach to narrative, which he
constructs from a wealthy network of recurring and interrelated motifs—almost like a computer system. Rayns
mentions many of these but fails to note some of the more interesting cases and their relationship.
I'd argue that the two primary motifs are light and weapons. The film opens with a hand switching on a
hanging light bulb. Throughout the film during the gang wars we see characters racing around to pick up
weapons. This “light" motif is echoed by Si'r's failing eyesight and his theft of a flashlight that he uses to read
in bed. Early on, Yang composes shots so that half the frame is lit and half the frame is dark, so that Si'r is
often seen moving from one into the other. The film brilliantly portrays its central conflict—Si'r's ability to
maintain a virtuous righteousness and not fall into the myopic darkness of violence—through many scenes
where he's tempted to pick up his own weapons. In an early scene, Si'r grabs a bat when he's pushed by Sly,
the gang member who's tried to take over as leader in Honey's absence. Later, when the local grocer, who
holds a jealous grudge against Si'r's family, is drunkenly walking home, we see a closeup of Si'r picking up a
brick, tempted to hit him, as a street light glows in the background (the brick itself echoes the early scene in
which Sly hits a 217 gang member with a brick). Later still during one of the three encounters between Si'r, his
father, and school officials, in perhaps the film's most powerful symbolic image, Si'r destroys a lightbulb with a
bat.
Yang himself was a member of Taiwan's New Cinema movement along with other luminary Hou Hsiao--hsien,
and one could argue that A Brighter Summer Day is Yang's answer to a trio of Hou films in which the personal,
memorial, autobiography mixed with a sharp view of Taiwanese society: The Time to Live and the Time to Die,
Dust in the Wind, and, most importantly, A City of Sadness. From the former two Yang takes Hou's
personalized approach, viewing events through the intimately sympathetic lens of a family, and a rich,
nostalgic tonal quality. ABSD especially shares the dusty, diffused hues of Dust in the Wind, creating a rich
visual texture. However, Yang's formalism owes most to A City of Sadness. Like that film, Yang makes usage
of spatial motifs and distance, where certain scenes are constantly returned to in identical composition. This
allows these spaces to build up emotional resonance because of the life that occurs there. Also like A City of
Sadness, Yang stages his eruptive violence through these spaces. The hospital that fills up with bodies in A City
of Sadness becomes the pool hall massacre in ABSD. Yang also combines the spatial element with the light
motif, so that when the violence reaches its crescendo it does so in total darkness. At one point, Si'r's stolen
flashlight is the only illumination as he looks on horrified at the aftermath.
Beyond these overarching motifs, Yang also creates such links through scenic transitions, often utilizing them
to elaborate on the film's themes. In one scene, Ming comes on to find her mother having a severe asthma
attack. She takes her to the hospital and we see her walking out of the room and towards the camera, her
sadness and stress visible on her face. From this, Yang cuts to a close--up of her crying, but it's quickly
revealed that this is, in fact, her screen test to be an actress in a local production. The blurred line between
truth and fiction is one of the film's many tangential themes, beautifully expressed here. It also sums up
Ming's character, whose meaning and motivations Si'r constantly struggles with (and fails) to understand. We
also see it in a scene where Si'r goes out hunting with his best friend, Ma, and Yang cuts from the gun shots in
real life to the gun shots of Si'r and others watching a film in a theater with gunshots. This in itself echoes two
scenes in which Si'r puts on a “movie gangster" hat and plays by using his finger as a gun. He turns around
and “shoots" Ming who appears in the doorway behind him. Later, Ming points a real gun at Si'r (not knowing
it's real, or loaded), and “shoots" at him.
While most of these connections build up the film's thematic substance, Yang predominantly uses them to
advance the narrative, and because of Yang's ability to often balance numerous narrative threads within the
same scene—it's not uncommon for his camera to start on one character or group, follow them, and pick up
another; or even maintain multiple characters and groups in multiple layers of the image—the result is one of
the most narratively rich films in cinema history that almost demands multiple viewings. It's also why the 4-
hour run-time flies by as no scene is superfluous, and Yang is surprisingly economic in his handling. He's less
inclined to languorously hang on images and scenes for their poetic beauty or emphasize ephemeral tonal
qualities ala his New Taiwanese contemporaries like Hou and Tsai. This may either be a strength or weakness
depending on your perspective.
ABSD shares most of these techniques with Yang's other masterpiece, Yi Yi, but the two films couldn't be more
different otherwise. Yi Yi is humanistically poignant whereas ABSD is ruthlessly bleak. The family in Yi Yi
suffers their own hardships in relation to modern--day Taiwan, but many of them are personal and universal—a
teenager's first love, Yang- Yang's discovery of photography—and the closing speech suggests hope and
promise. ABSD's characters, however, seems like helpless victims of a pervasively corrupt system. Besides
Si'r's struggle to maintain his sense of virtue, his father's torturous interrogation at the hands of the secret
police nearly break his spirit, and thus that of the family's. In an early scene of quiet wisdom, the father had
praised Si'r for refusing to take the blame for something he didn't do, stating those who'd take the easy way
and give in could do all kinds of horrible things. Throughout most of the film, Si'r maintains his virtue despite
temptations. This is one reason why the ending is so overwhelmingly devastating.
ABSD is not an easy film. During a first viewing most will be occupied just trying to keep track of who's who
and their relations. It is, however, an investment worth making. There also aren't many films composed on an
epic scale with such detail while making sure that the whole is greater than the sum. Yang has that rare magic
of being able to wring the utmost power from the smallest of moments, so that even a broken radio at the
end, announcing the names of students who have made it to the next school level, carries an emotional
wallop. There also aren't many sprawling artistic masterpieces that are as humble as they are humbling: A
Brighter Summer Day is one of them.
I think your "Scorsese meets Ozu" comparison is pretty spot-on. I guess in that case, Yi Yi is more Ozu without the Scorsese (though Yang's formalism is different than Ozu's). Yeah, that final scene is as powerful as any I've ever seen in film, and even though on first watch it seems like it comes out of nowhere, upon rewatches it seems almost tragically inevitable, especially once you follow the development of the film's various motifs. I read that Bordwell article after I wrote my review, and I'm not sure if I was happy or sad that he'd already written about the stuff I noted... I guess I should be happy that I had noticed what probably the greatest cinema academic mind of our time noticed, lol. Glad you also watched it twice. I've now seen it three times, once with the commentary. First was on a laserdisc-to-DVD transfer long before the Criterion version was released. I could appreciate its greatness back then but it really took the Criterion version for me to fully absorb it.
I really do hope you explore the Taiwanese New Wave more. The sad part is that Hou's two best films aren't even available on DVD, and the versions floating around out there are piss-poor quality (the DVD release of Puppetmaster, now long OOP, cropped its wide-screen format to 4:3). All of those after that are/were on DVD, but many also long OOP. Luckily, three of his masterpeices are available on blu-ray (Time to Live and the Time to Die, Dust in the Wind, and The Assassin), but only the last one is easy to find. I have the former two on a limited Taiwanese release that's now also hard to find. If you want I could upload them to a torrent or something.
Raxivace wrote:212. A View to a Kill (1985, Dir. John Glen) - The last of the Roger Moore Bond films. Not a great a film by any means, but its goofiness was a nice reprieve from the heaviness of two ABSD viewings. Christopher Walken was dopey as the villain, and I liked Tanya Roberts and Grace Jones here.
I am kind of ready to move on from Moore himself though. It's been fun but its time for some new blood.
Yeah, those last few Moore Bonds don't deserve much commentary. Their just goofy and kinda suck-ass, but I can see them being a fun diversion after something as long and heavy as ABSD.
Raxivace wrote:209. Le Gai Savoir (AKA Joy of Learning, 1969, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard) - Yeah I'm just gonna quote Jimbo's brief review from the IMDb days here since I largely agree with it.
:) Still planning on making the trip through 70s Godard? That's a lot of crap to wade through! I'm at least interested to hear what you have to say about Numero Deux.
Maybe that image explains why Godard loved Marx/communism so much; to him it was like sex!
Raxivace wrote:These parallels between Anno and Godard that keep popping up are curious though, since Anno reportedly had not seen any Godard films when he made Evangelion. Very interesting.
Godard's influence spread pretty quickly throughout cinema, so it's entirely possible Anno saw some films from directors influenced by Godard. Though TBH I can't think of any that did that "characters talking directly about themes on a dark sound stage" thing since Godard except for Anno. Would love to know where he got the inspiration from that. I will say though that the Japanese New Wave had plenty of Godard-isms themselves, sometimes even weirder. See Eros + Massacre for an example.
Raxivace wrote:205. The Other Side of the Wind (2018, Dir. The ghost of Orson Welles)
This really does sound excellent. I've never been quite the Welles fan that you are (I think he made three masterpieces, and everything after that is good-to-brilliant, but not masterpieces), but he's never not interesting at the least.
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being." -- Carl Jung
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Fortunately, I think the best ending of Witcher 3 for the main storyline is easily achievable without this kind of external tampering. Just be a good person, and good things will happen. Of course, things are less clear cut in the secondary character-centric storylines. I'd recommend to periodically maintain some saves during the game, especially during the big missions. Also when you get towards the end of the main storyline, make sure you leave at least one save before all the action starts as as there is one big decision in the end that some people (*ahem*Rax*cough*) get "wrong".
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