by Allan Fish
(Taiwan 2000 173m) DVD1/2
Aka. Yi Yi
Talking to grandma
p Shinya Kawai, Naoko Tsukeda d/w Edward Yang ph Yang Wei-Han ed Chen Bo-Wen m/art Peng Kai-Li
Wa Nien-Jen (NJ Jien), Elaine Jin (Min-Min), Issei Ogata (Mr Ota), Kelly Lee (Ting-Ting), Jonathan Chang (Yang-Yang), Adriane Lin (Li-Li), Chen Hsi-Sheng (Ah-Di), Ko So-Yun (Sherry), Hsiao Shu-shen (Hsiao Yen), Hsin-Yi Tseng (Yun Yun),
Our alphabetical journey now takes a second brief stop, for three hours at least, at the Edward Yang station. It’s the last time we will visit here. Had I listed the film by its original title – by which it is equally well known in the US – it would come much closer to the book’s end which, in some ways, wouldn’t be inappropriate. Yang’s masterpiece is a film about looking back; in fact it’s about looking full stop, but especially, in the mind of the principal character, it’s a ruminative, melancholy work whose levels slowly reveal themselves upon future viewings.
When his mother-in-law has a stroke soon after her son’s wedding and falls into a coma, NJ Jien’s life slowly begins to unravel. His teenage daughter is experiencing love for the first time, his infant son is withdrawing more and more into himself and is only happy when he has his camera with him, while his wife cannot cope with her mother’s coma, and goes away to a mountain retreat for spiritual rest. At around the same time, while trying to drum up business for his flagging computer firm, he meets the first love of his life whom he hasn’t seen in nearly three decades, now married and living in Chicago. The meeting serves to put in focus thoughts about what might have been.
Trying to sum up the film’s overall ambience, and its message, is best achieved when using images and dialogue from the film. Take the opening wedding scene. We know from the fact that we see the large photo of the happy couple placed upside down on a stand that peoples’ lives are about to be turned likewise topsy-turvy. Yet it’s a throwaway euphemistic line made by one woman to describe the fad of marrying when pregnant that captured the essence of the piece without perhaps even realising it. For just as young people have sex before the ticket of marriage, NJ is left to wonder rather whether he caught the wrong bus in the first place. His story is not rather of the one that got away, a subject milked to death in numerous melodramas, but rather the one he let go and the consequences thereof. Only by coming face to face with his one-time love can he come to terms with the emptiness of his current life, and with the apathy that leads people to accept the almost stagnation that comes from conformity.
The second snippet to speak volumes comes very late in the film, when NJ’s young son casually explains why he takes pictures of the backs of people’s heads. It’s because he wants to show people what they themselves cannot see. And just as his camera does that, Yang camera seeks to capture, in a glance, a melancholy sigh or a burst of repressed anger that which other people don’t see. It exists in an elegiac mood of contemplation, illustrated in numerous diverse ways. Whether staring into the bottom of whisky glasses or blankly into windows in McDonalds, glass, and reflective surfaces in general, feature prominently here, and further illustrate the nature of Yang’s vision as he observes people, who, on reaching middle age, realise they, to quote NJ’s wife, are living a blank every day. A mood which reaches out to and into the depths of melancholia and is perfectly caught in the scene of Mr Ota playing ‘Liebestraum’ on the piano in a bar which, likewise, is struggling to survive. To top it all, we get a violent murder and another death which, in its almost transcendental nature, wistfully recalls the epiphanal ending of Dreyer’s Ordet. Superbly directed, written and acted (Nien-Jen and Ogata the stand-outs in a perfect cast), this is a film made for the crossover from 20th to 21st century, filled with regret, remorse and a people crying out inside for some hope, some comfort, speaking into an answer-phone in a deserted office at night.
It’s just bizarre to see this masterpiece outside the top ten of any list concerning the best films of the 21st century. Easily one of the greatest final films ever (right up there with Orson Welles’ F for Fake and Luis Bunuel’s The Obscure Object of Desire), Edward Yang creates a beautiful family portrait that never feels overly sentimental or melodramatic. Every emotion that we as an audience feel (from laughter to affection) is from subtle storytelling, spot on acting, and Yang’s wonderful visual eye. Nien-Jen Wu, a screenwriter and filmmaker, turns out one of the greatest performances of the decade. Its a performance that has the authenticity that could only come from someone who isn’t a regular actor (not unlike Lamberto Maggiorani’s unforgettable portrayal as the father in De Sica’s magnum opus the Bicycle Thieves). This is such an incredible film and one that should be a hell of a lot higher.
Ah, this is one truly wonderful film. Love it, after all it made my Top 10. The melancholic & contemplative tone, the lyricism, the pathos of everyday life & mundane stuff, the lovely pacing that ensure the movie grows onto you as it proceeds, the Regular Joe characters with all their flaws & regrets & disappointments – Edward Yang’s last film remains one of the great masterpieces of the decade.
You’ve knocked off a lot of usual suspects outside the top 20! An excellent film, one which left me rather cold on first viewing, but which I fell deeper into on second viewing, and will probably appreciate more and more every time I see it.
Glad you mentioned the title thing in the first paragraph, because I was going to ask (I take it A One and a Two was the more common name in the UK)? How do you choose what title to go by – I’m thinking also of “Les Quatres Cent Coups” for The 400 Blows; is it partly based on where it would fall from the book?
Looking forward to the top 20…
Its largely down to how it’s perceived in film periodicals. With French films I generally use the original titles up to the 1990s and often the English title afterwards. Italian films likewise it varies between old and recent. I generally go by how it was referred to in film guides when I grew up – in Halliwell’s, Time Out, Radio Times, etc.
I mean, only in America would they call Les Enfants du Paradis Children of Paradise, or La Règle du Jeu Rules of the Game or Une Partie de Campagne A Day in the Country, or A Bout de Souffle Breathless.
I’ve heard this is a fabulous film and Allan’s essay and placement here reiterates that, it’s one I will be seeing as soon as some time frees up.
Great review.
I love this movie.
I think of it whenever I think of “perfection” in cinema, it’s exceeding quality in every aspect of the film, every actor, shot, location specially chosen for this perfect movie.
Also, the script its great and its aided by its extended lenght, because it ends up talking about everyone’s lives, in one or other matter, as every “phase” of our lives seems to be represented there.
I also apreciate a lot the kid Yang, which seems to be an incarnation of the deceased director, who tells his own way of seeing film and telling stories at the final scene of the movie.
I already talked a bit about this movie earlier, as I wrote about it here: http://evildeadites.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/3xxic/
I know putting a link here it’s kinda wrong (shameless self promotion) but as my blog is in spanish and not many of you are capable of reading it or understand it, I put this because I wrote it in english.
It’s not as good as this piece, but it’s my contribution.
Great great movie – not surprised at all to see it right here. I had it in my honorable mentions though it easily could’ve placed anywhere from 20-25 (and come to think of it, it probably should have – but oh well, sometimes these listings really depend on one’s mood and most recent memories).
One of the best slice-of-life-as-a-mosaic films ever — probably one notch below Altman’s more cyncial Short Cuts in my book.
Looks amazing and I’ve had it for ages, definitely need to see before I can vote.