Taipei Stories
Reflections on the films of Edward Yang.
For the longest time, I’ve had this image in my head: a group of miscreant junior high school boys, standing in front their school, creating trouble because there was nothing better to do. Perhaps one day, I thought, I’d write a story about them. Last weekend I discovered there was a problem: Edward Yang already made that movie back in 1991, and it’s one of the greatest ever made. A Brighter Summer Day is an epic tale about juvenile gangsters set in 1960, when Taiwan was under martial law. That description doesn’t evoke film’s grand yet intimate scope. It’s one of those movies that make you angry for not having seen it sooner because what the fuck, how could this movie just be so... everything?
I’m glad that the Lincoln Center hosted a complete retrospective of Edward Yang’s filmography, because otherwise I’m not sure when I would have delved into his work. The series, which broke revenue records for the Lincoln Center’s film program, included all seven features that Yang directed, as well as some rarely screened films that he had contributed to. The screenings of his most acclaimed movies, A Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi, consistently sold out, even though both films are readily available. Anyone who wanted to just “consume” these movies as “content” could easily watch most of them in the comfort of their home. But thousands of us cinephiles made the trek to the Upper West Side — during the holiday season — to watch three-hour long Taiwanese family dramas.
All of Edward Yang’s movies are pretty much about Taiwan and its uncertain place in the world, but I’m not sure any filmmaker has ever gotten so much great material out of one subject. The most obscure movie in the retrospective’s line up was the airless The Winter of 1905, directed by Yu Wei-cheng, which features Yang’s first produced screenplay. Set five years before Sun Yat-Sen founded the Republic of China, the story centers on Li Wei-Tung, a Shanghainese art student studying in Tokyo, while the Russo-Japanese War rages in the distance and his native China enters a period of turmoil. A childhood friend emerges and tries to convince him to join the revolutionary Tongmenghui group and overthrow the Qing dynasty. Meanwhile, Li enters into a relationship with Haruko, who works as a geisha to pay for her schooling. It’s a rarely screened picture, and watching the film, it’s easy to see why: while Yang may have written the script, he sure as hell didn't direct it. There's no narrative drive, and the film is listlessly put together, as if one were watching a mediocre television drama.
I found more merit in Taipei Story, his second feature film, a subdued cry of rage about a nation on the precipice of massive change. I found the narrative approach a bit too scattershot, but there’s some good stuff in here. (I haven’t yet watched his debut feature, That Day, On the Beach, nor Terrorizers, the movie he made after Taipei Story.) His earlier work shows potential, but it was all just practice for A Brighter Summer Day, his first masterpiece.
It wasn’t enough that Yang made one generationally defining movie. He made two. I’m also left at a loss for words when thinking about Yi Yi, from 2000, the final film that Yang directed before his death, from cancer, at the age of 59. (The title roughly translates to “one after another.”)With its contemporary setting, the film addresses the effects of Taiwan’s 1990s tech boom through the perspective of a middle-class family. This description doesn’t capture what makes this movie so special; a critic once wrote that calling “Yi Yi a three-hour Taiwanese family drama is like calling Citizen Kane a film about a newspaper.” It’s a monumental, moving picture. No one ever told me that there's a whole segment that's Before Sunset smashed into Lost in Translation!! Had I known, I might have seen it sooner. But I’m glad that my first time was in a theater, a place where I could fully dedicate three hours of my day to this film. By the time Yi Yi reached its quietly devastating conclusion that brought happy tears to my face, I viewed the long runtime not as an imposition, but as an invitation to be fully immersed in another world. In one scene, a character claims that “movies give us twice what we get from daily life,” and it never felt truer than when I saw this movie.
A Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi form a diptych that perhaps tells the definitive story about Taiwanese society, then and now. One film reckons with the past and ends with innocence extinguished, the other questions the future but ultimately affirms the value of life. The soundtracks in each film are populated by American music, a symbol of the island nation’s dependence on the U.S. Both movies are very long, and both movies are among the greatest films I’ve ever seen. Being a period piece, A Brighter Summer Day has the benefit of hindsight in telling the story of a time and a place. It makes Yi Yi all the more impressive, because Yang had the uncommon clarity to tell the definitive story of an era while it was happening.
But he had to make two other movies before he could get there. A Confucian Confusion and Mahjong, both largely underseen because neither film got a proper home video or theatrical release in the U.S., work together to showcase an optimistic and a pessimistic portrait of Taipei at the end of the twentieth century. A Confucian Confusion was actually the first movie of Edward Yang’s that I saw, when a new restoration was screened at the New York Film Festival about a year ago. Witty and urbane, the film is a screwball comedy in the vein of an Ernst Lubitsch picture, with interweaving storylines amongst a group of good-looking friends, family, and lovers in the new Taipei. You think the movie will strain under the weight of all the zany goings on, but Yang sticks the landing. It’s an absolutely hilarious and biting satire of westernization set amidst a rising economy, and could be a good entry point into Yang’s career.
Following that lighthearted romp was Mahjong, a nihilistic, angsty tale about criss-crossing malcontents young and old (also in Taipei). Tonally, it’s the polar opposite of A Confucian Confusion; these characters inhabit a very different city than the cosmopolitan yuppies of Confucian. These two films have the same relationship with each other as Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express and Fallen Angels: one film is bright with possibilities, the other dark and foreclosed1. The violence in this film (both physical and sexual) may make some viewers too uncomfortable, but getting through those tougher moments will eventually pay off. And it's not as if the entire movie is an exercise in misery; there's a bitter, discordant levity throughout that ironically makes this a rather fun movie to watch. Yang's mise en scène is impeccable; he makes this film the same level of care as in his artier films like Yi Yi. Whether for dramatic or comedic effect, he lets his scenes unfold at a natural pace, often in long takes.
An amusing aspect of A Confucian Confusion is that it makes T.G.I. Friday's the classy place to be for Taipei’s young singles in the nineties, and if you're to believe Mahjong, the Hard Rock Cafe was the nightlife hotspot. It's where all of the major players are introduced, with expats and natives mingling as Taiwanese pop plays in the background. There's special attention paid to a Hard Rock logo set into the floor, a symbol of an Americanized society where every relationship is an act of commerce. Luen-Luen, perhaps the only sympathetic character among the film’s dramatis personae, seems to revere the logo, only to watch as people casually step on it as they walk on by. One could make an informal trilogy of Yang’s final three films, each a different emotion regarding his adopted homeland. A Confucian Confusion: a movie of hope. Mahjong: and a movie of anger. And Yi Yi: a movie of maturity, ambivalence, and acceptance. One feeling after another.
How to watch: If you were unfamiliar with Edward Yang until now, don’t make the same mistake I did and wait several years to see any of his films. Taipei Story, A Brighter Summer Day, and Yi Yi are currently streaming on the Criterion Channel. While the new restorations of A Confucian Confusion and Mahjong have not been released yet, I suspect that the Criterion Collection will put out a box set of Edward Yang’s films later this year.
I hope I didn’t make it seem like watching any of these movies would be like doing the assigned reading for a seminar on twentieth century East Asia. Although the intimate sweep of A Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi can feel like reading a long book, they would be the kind of book you’ll want to keep in your back pocket forever.
I’m sure someone has written about the parallel careers of Edward Yang and Wong Kar-Wai. Although born roughly a decade part, they were both born in Shanghai and raised away from the mainland, in Taiwan and Hong Kong, respectively. Both became titans of world cinema by examining the precarious nature of their adopted homelands. While Wong’s sensual films prioritize tone and mood over all else, Yang’s a more straightforward storyteller at heart.