By Marilyn Ferdinand
The immigrant experience has been fertile ground for many and sundry films throughout the decades, from David Butler’s Delicious (1931) and George Stevens’ I Remember Mama (1948), to Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans (1992) and James Gray’s The Immigrant (2014). Of course, the seminal immigrant film, which I reviewed here back in 2011, is West Side Story (1961). The parallels between the disaffected, semi-rootless youths from barely established immigrant families in New York and their Taiwanese counterparts in A Brighter Summer Day are very striking, indicating the universal problem of trying to adapt to an alien world. Where director Edward Yang’s first masterpiece differs from West Side Story is in its broad, intricate consideration of entire families of mainland Chinese uprooted by the ascendency of Mao Tse-tung and its examination of the transition from one set of cultural values—respect for authority and one’s elders—to another—Western individualism, emancipated youth, and possession-oriented consumerism. In addition, although there is a central love story of a sort in this film, it is not the enmity of gangs that pulls the lovers apart, but rather their conflicting values adrift in an unsettled and unsettling land.
The action revolves primarily around two rival gangs, the Little Park gang and the 217 gang; 14-year-old student Zhang Zhen, nicknamed Xiao (“little”) Si’r (Chen Chang), his parents, and four siblings; and Ming (Lisa Yang), a beautiful 13-year-old girl whose boyfriend and leader of the Little Parks, Honey (Hung-Ming Lin), has run off. The film takes place in 1960, a mere decade after Si’r’s family fled Shanghai in 1949. The Zhangs and other immigrants like them are still looking for a secure foothold in their new country. Mrs. Zhang (Elaine Jin), though a fully qualified university instructor in Shanghai, cannot seem to get certified in Taipei. Mr. Zhang (Kuo-Chu Chang) is a civil servant with a going-nowhere career. Their finances are shaky: they buy their groceries on credit from Uncle Fat (Zhuo Ming), who periodically goes on the warpath to collect what he’s owed, and treasure little but Mrs. Zhang’s good watch and the promises of one of Zhang’s colleagues that he can get them the good jobs they need to really feel established. Their provisional status and free-floating anxiety has their children looking for a sense of belonging and status as gang members.
The film opens at night with the Little Park gang being trounced on their turf by the 217s. Holed up in a darkened school corridor, the gang discusses Honey’s abandonment and their vulnerability without him. Two of the gang members bring forward a captured 217 member. Honey’s brother Deuce (Wang Zongzheng) picks up a thick, wooden block and offers it to two younger boys to prove they are ready to run with the big boys. When they refuse to take the block, Deuce raises it and slams it hard against the captured boy’s head, knocking him unconscious and sending the young wannabes running. When the boy comes to, Deuce sends him back to his gang with a warning that the Little Park gang will avenge themselves. This sudden brutality is characteristic of what is to come, a sharp contrast with West Side Story’s poetic and relatively infrequent violence.
The main story centers on Si’r and his developing crush and eventual romance with Ming. He spies one night—and the vast majority of this film takes place at night—Sly (Hung-Yu Chen) making out with a girl who turns out to be Ming. Si’r keeps Ming’s secret, even naming another girl as the one he saw, because he knows she pines for Honey. Ming drops her guard with Si’r, seeing him as different from all the other guys who come sniffing around her, and their playful interactions form most of what little daytime activity there is. When Honey returns, Si’r gallantly steps aside like the honorable person his father has tried to teach him to be, even though he is already fairly obsessed with Ming. Time away from her is just filling time at the loathed night school where he talks back to and swears at his teachers and the administrators for their unjust treatment of him, flirting with expulsion.
Like most of the gang members, Si’r has a temper. The importance of saving face and the allure of weapons are all too common maladies of these teens and preteens. Living in houses abandoned by the Japanese, the boys find knives and even a samurai sword hidden in the rafters—another culture’s detritus waiting for assimilation by these new Taiwanese. A young would-be singer, Cat (Chi-tsan Wang), croons transliterated American pop songs, especially those of Elvis Presley. Cat even receives an answer to a letter and tape he sent to The King saying how gratified he is that his music is so popular in such an isolated, unknown country. Elvis might never have heard of Taiwan, but it’s clear that for Cat and his friends, the country is also largely hidden, a blank slate onto which they try to graft whatever identity they can. Wang accentuates the unknown, possibly unknowable Taiwanese culture though his almost exclusive use of medium shots and unusual framings, showing people and places half-hidden by window and door jambs, objects emerging from total darkness like ghostly manifestations, shadows of warriors slashing at their rivals in near-total darkness, empty rooms save for one honest soul bewildered to be incarcerated during the Kuomintang “White Terror” to root out Communist enemies of the Nationalist state.
Wang’s interest in this subculture was wide and deep, almost as though he was still trying to understand the place even 40 years after emigrating from Shanghai to Taiwan, a place he left and to which he finally returned. His four-hour film teems with more than 100 characters with speaking parts, including school administrators and teachers, a film crew and actors in a soundstage adjacent to where Si’r attends school, shopkeepers and restauranteurs, police interrogators, doctors and nurses, and many gang members with nicknames like Airplane, Diaper, Threads, and Baldie. Within the drama of the central story are incidents great and small that flesh out this marginal area of Little Park, Taipei. A young Little Park gang member is teased about consuming porn, which he denies reading; he is later seen trying to buy some at a street stall, but runs when he sees Ming and Si’r coming toward him. After they pass by, he goes right back to the stall to finish what he started. In another incident, the director of the film, who has been arguing with its tempermental star, sees Ming and invites her for a screen test—after all she’s a teenager who would fit the part of the young girl better than the actress who “doesn’t look a day under 40!”
The notorious climax of the film extends the confusion of youth and the chasm that divides East and West. Si’r tries to please his father by studying to get into day school, and worries about the honor of all those he loves, especially Ming. Ming, on the other hand, runs toward Western values of self-determination. Despite the incongruously demure school uniform she wears throughout the film, she bounces from one boy to another and even tries to seduce her engaged doctor. Furious with Si’r’s jealousy and talk about her honor, she dismisses him as just another boy who wants to change her. At an age when girls often start to go underground under social pressure, she is wise to realize that when you are caught between two worlds, the only hope of survival is to cling stubbornly to your sense of self. Si’r’s answer to her self-assertion is as shattering as it is inevitable, a cry in the dark to the film’s title theme “Are You Lonesome Tonight.”
Previously unavailable for decades, A Brighter Summer Day has been restored by the World Cinema Foundation. It has been rumored that it will be released on the Criterion label and air on TCM on September 6 in the wee hours of the morning. Check your local listings to confirm.
This one is completely off my radar but am glad to hear that it will be airing on TCM. I will have to DVR it and check it out. It looks great and glad to see we are including films on this list that are not the ‘typical’. Forces us all to stay on our toes and dig deeper. Thanks Marilyn.
Jon – I was fortunate to see this quite a few years ago in a theatre, but the film is fairly unknown in most parts of the world because of unavailability. The only Edward Yang film that is fairly well known is Yi Yi, and deservedly so, but it’s a cruel shame he is so little recognized. I wasn’t able to confirm the TCM showing, so do keep an eye out for it.
Sorry to say I have not seen the film either. But what a review! I will attempt to avail upon my sources.
Sadly, very few people have seen this film in the U.S., Peter. My interest in naming it my #1 childhood film is not only because I think it is, but also because I want more people to know about it and take advantage of opportunities (so far, promised but not delivered) to see it. We need to ensure Criterion does issue this film and that a national tour occurs.
Well, I’m glad I’m not the only person never to have heard of this movie! I’ll have to keep an eye out for the (hoped for) Criterion release.
Edward Yang is one of the greatest directors to come out of Taiwan. He started his film career rather late in life and died young. We need to treasure all of his films for their quality and expansive humanity.
Well, I will break the ice here. I have SEEN this film! Ha! I received a copy several years ago from my usual source and I watched it in short order. This is a dark film of exceeding urgency shot at night to accentuate that aspect and to mute any firm visualization of time and place. As Marilyn asserts in her terrific review of this very difficult to come by (yes one might ask, but then how did it make this countdown? Allan reviewed it previously and he placed it high on his own ballot as did on my own, and some voters from the Foreign Film Classics Forum like Aaron West, Ahmet and Lee Price voted it high as well on their ballots) one can easily compared to this to films like THE IMMIGRANT and especially WEST SIDE STORY. I remember Allan mentioned REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE too, and I fully concur, though EAST OF EDEN is equally recalled, as is Fellini’s I VITELLONI. The violence in the film is uncompromising, and yes I’d agree the denouement is “notorious.” A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY is melancholic and visually sublime, and its four hour length is sustained by a fascinating examination of characters, many in sexual awakening mode. Government meddling is also evident throughout this novelistic film. Once seen it is never forgotten, and for once the term masterpiece shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Glad to have someone comment who knows the film. Let’s just keep trying to get the word out and pressure some of our art houses to screen the restored film.
Completely unaware of this. Will definitely check out the TCM showing. Thanks Marilyn.
John – Let’s hope the rumor is true. I haven’t been able to verify it.
I’m very pleased to see this important film represented here with Marilyn’s very fine and extensive review. I saw A Brighter Summer Day only once some years ago on youtube, a truly terrible way to watch a four hour Taiwanese film. I continue patiently waiting for a chance to see it properly.
Thank you, Duane. I fear I don’t think the review was extensive enough – there is so much in this film that I would have liked to have considered.