Article originally published in the journal Shangri-La , in the monograph for the filmmaker Edward Yang, where it appears proper formatting and layout. The magazine can be downloaded directly from here .
In this sense, some of Yang's films are committed to the intellectual as emotional reveal, while others prefer to opt for a pure emotion, which covers a thick layer of thoughts and ideas on existence, loneliness and forms of relationships between people in the twenty-first century. Yang's film joins two centuries being able to combine the influences of film with the influences of life, watching films with the observation of reality, love and hatred for everything around him, and the contradictions inherent that enrich all individuality.
Edward Yang's films are deeply attached to his long and very localized in their homeland, despite their influences foreignizers and having spent periods of his life in America. These characteristics make his work into something completely personal, too, and here is the most reflective of his legacy, does not lose sight of the temporal and spatial relationships, influences that spring from the certainty that nothing exists without it everything conditions, preceding it or around it. This will mean historicist A brighter summer day (1991), fundamental film embodies the rest of his work, or Western influences in all his films, made explicitly expressed, beyond film features in the penultimate frame of their creation, Mahjong (1996).
As Jaime Pena said in his introduction to Edward Yang [i] , there are various classifications and groupings of Yang's films about forms, styles and characteristics. And that is something that stands out in a career of only seven feature films and they seem to be defined quite themselves.
One of these classifications, John Anderson, "Yang brings cinema into two blocks, the" Urban Trilogy "would constitute That Day, On The Beach (1983), Taipei Story (1985) and The Terrorizer (1986), and the black comedy depicting the cynicism of the rich society of the nineties Taipei, A Confucian Confusion (1994) and Mahjong . Outside any documentation would be his two major works A Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi, two films that, for Anderson, emparentarían by themes and structures. For its part, Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh and Darrell William Davis would structure it with the group of modernist melodrama eighties, which would take its contribution to In Our Time and its first three films, and its three postmodern comedies a decade later, the black and A Confucian Confusion cynical and Mahjong, followed by lighter and humanist Yi Yi. Again would be decoupled A Brighter Summer Day , perhaps his most ambitious film, probably the most successful film of Yang and perhaps also of all contemporary cinema. "
Yang is usually reminds one of the founders of the Taiwanese New Wave, who modernized his country's cinema following the legacy, twenty years later, his colleagues in the "Nouvelle Vague" French. But just as happened with the French 60, in Taiwan every filmmaker has made his own way, within the artistic independence and adequacy, and Yang has been free, thus, all kinds of clichés or generational characteristics, This does not imply that they can not establish guidelines and criteria more or less general interpretation and decoding of their world. First of all, his work in general it is deeply personal and unrelated to any kind of fashion, and hence that some critics might feel misplaced due to certain changes experienced in his films.
urban trilogy, following the footsteps of Antonioni
The first three films of Edward Yang make up its so-called "urban trilogy" , and define a number of issues and concerns that are central to the Taiwanese filmmaker's career. From these films we see a director with his time deeply rooted and society, making an indissoluble union between background, form and context, which will be the most brilliant achievement of these films. Just as Ford, Ozu and Antonioni, the collective sense, the social scaffolding chained to a particular time, will mark deeply the feelings and ramblings of the protagonists. If Ford Ozu and unites them a nostalgic look to the past and disenchanted present (expressed in Ozu in this, at Ford in the past), Antonioni, and Yang, prefer digging in the knife hidden evils of contemporary society, and how these are manifested quietly in private relations. Even if we speak of references can not forget to Werner Herzog, Aguirre whose film about a filmmaker turned Yang, or Mikio Naruse, probably the closest filmmaker who most need and Edward Yang.
This referred to the contemporary commitment does not mean that already in this first trilogy, Yang is not interested in the true meaning of time, memory and recall, key issues (not to compose the substrate content, but the point of view) of his first film, That Day, On the Beach (1983). Yang shape to the film through flashbacks used to tell us the degradation and the hell that is becoming, little by little a relationship, preponderating and the role of memory and without being condescending to the sweetening that causes the memory. Yet he is aware that we are shown a recall, and recall all tends to go toward some end, like a sphere on top of a hill which unbalances a light puff of wind. With an obvious aesthetic concerns, perhaps too obvious in a film so visceral, in which both matter what is said, That Day, On the Beach fragments of reality shows absolutely natural, that demonstrates the need derives from autobiographical a film novice. Is discovered, the socio-political upheaval a Taiwan that the U.S. wants to look too quickly, and this causes obvious conflict with traditional values \u200b\u200bof submission and sacrifice. Yang, who rebels against the outdated moral values \u200b\u200bof society and against the modern conceit of savage capitalism, want to say that this is a wrong way, and that the explosion is about to arrive. But ultimately, That Day, On the Beach (evocative and from the title) is a great movie, however, suffers in the final part of a novice filmmaker impurity in too obvious a desire to demonstrate that you're telling is important, that transcends a simple love story over the years. So somehow squeaks sermon brother, explaining the ideas of the film, or the coda in off that seeks to emphasize the desire lyrical and evocative of the film.
's next film, Taipei Story (1985), is led by Hou Hsiao Hsien, and, interestingly, is the Yang film that comes closest in intent and style, the work of fellow, the other spearhead of the "Taiwanese New Wave." With an almost nonexistent narrative, which brings it even closer to Antonioni, and an elliptical style that recalls Bresson moments, Taipei Story shows even more strongly in his previous film disintegration of society through the disintegration of a marriage. Surely, of the three is the most demanding film with the audience (hence the box office failure at the time), lack of narrative handles or identification with the characters, making it more appealing in the coolness with which delves into the deepest feelings. Intrahistorias objects and characters that have reached their own metalinguistic category, and reframing indoors through doors or different furniture make us feel the isolation and confinement Yang who always joins the new conditions of life in the city, through the contrast between the intimacy of the apartments and flats in urban outdoors.
Finally, The Terrorizer (1986) presents a series of stories crossed years before Robert Altman revitalize this narrative structure. Halfway between the thriller and the intimate drama, Yang opened his camera to the most problematic neighborhoods, marginal characters who flirt with crime, not forgetting, of course, middle-class families in which the desire for professional success just coexistence with the staff.
offscreen narration and eloquent inserts in the middle of the scenes are reminiscent of Bresson, especially in his last work, Money (L'Argent, 1983), who also played to transcend genres, in addition, the presence of photographs that are essential to trigger the plot forces us to rethink Antonioni, Blow-up (1966) and thus, the possibilities of film metacinematográficas. And for the first time in the work of Yang (not last), chance is crucial in the movie, which seems essential in a film that tries to reflect the connections between different lives in a modern city (not far off the Magnolia (1999) by Paul Thomas Anderson). Similarly, none of the previous two films was possible to identify the viewer with some of the characters, in this case, the writer composes a very positive character, which can be easily understood by the viewer, and also gives some keys of the film, like the ironic stubbornness to separate fact from fiction when one and the other are the same ... Not every creator is obligated to deny this relationship? The Terrorizer takes it easy, but with an inherent tension always present, and only seems to falter in a violent stretch that looks like a sort of epilogue to the three films, and save giving a final twist consistent with all his previous work.
Views today, the three films may seem too rooted in the 80's, both in the atmosphere of the city as the characters and the moral crossroads raised, however, formally get that localism and try to universalize and global issues through a deeply scarred context and, therefore, profoundly real. Edward Yang achieved many significant achievements in these three great films (plus a great influence on current filmmakers, and can think, for example, Nobuhiro Suwa even more than in Tsai Ming Liang), all Sumptuous bill, which makes us think how it was possible that an author of this caliber to remain many years in the shadows, unknown beyond the lists of Jonathan Rosenbaum and Miguel Marías.
A Brighter Summer Day: Are you lonesome tonight?
it seems the big question being asked Yang about adolescence, A Brighter Summer Day , which has the smell of the most personal of his movies while away on all temporarily (also, in part, stylistically) of the other works of career. The institution A Brighter Summer Day is too large to make comparisons, either with their own work of director or other cultures. However, while Yang is the most classic film in its narrative and relationships between characters, it ceases to function as postmodern artifact in the way it handles the reference, identity and myth. It is no coincidence the omnipresence of a figure like Elvis, or teenagers who may remember James Dean in a movie that plays with the myths to define themselves. For let us not forget that the pretext for the illustration of a print generation of this magnitude is the memory of an actual event, a teen murder which rose in Taiwan, by the uniqueness of the event, to the category of myth. And myths are nourished by their very nature, engulf each other, as did James Dean or Elvis in this movie with them. Nor should we forget the explicit references to war and peace , the boundless Tolstoy novel, much more than a statement of intent.
After a series of films in which Yang's eyes focused on middle-aged characters, often young married couple (although a teenage star in his short film In Our Time , and another was quite important The Terrorizer ), now teenagers are the protagonists, with adults being part of the Taiwanese landscape, a way of defining the context that both affects the lives of the characters, real life. What we are shown in A Brighter Summer Day sentimental chronicles a turning point in Taiwan's history (major concern of all "Taiwanese New Wave"), and then determines how the lives of those who, In turn, less important socially. The struggle of youth gangs, the U.S. film and music, the educational problem posed by new ideas, the importance of family ...
Yang is always fundamental to the family, and seems to say that the lack of cohesion, poor communication between its members, means that young people look elsewhere to claw grips and allow them to forge their own identity: in this If religion, fashion, gambling, or pandilleo youth (played by each of the brothers of the title family.)
As all the characters common to a weakness that is manifested in the deep night film, women are always shown those most righteous, brain, and emotionally strong, the violence that children released is nothing but an expression of their insecurity and fears. So Yang never condemns, or even attempt to judge, but seeks to understand his fellow man (even if this sounds like a cliché), in some cases becoming more oblivious to the romantic visions dubious characters. And the great "tour de force" of the film, set in the humanistic purpose (we could say that social) understanding is, despite being a coral ribbon in the conscious identification of the viewer with the protagonist, who takes full effect at the end.
was mentioned briefly the night calling the film decisive for the creation of the climate and atmosphere that make up the landscape and spirit, making Yang a director of the race of Ozu and Ford (here more than ever by the epic nature of his narrative and play with the story through myths). What we can say is that A Brighter Summer Day has some of the brighter night scenes and evocative that you remember, and the night shows like that moment in which everything happens as if the days are over that weak links between the periods of darkness. The contrasts of lights are like those repressed passions that can only be released when the environment, immersed in darkness, vanish, and only the human being, individual, facing himself, ready to mourn, slash or temper the mood in a lyrical ride back home. After the storm, happy, sad for what should never happen, but covered by the shadow of protection.
Also relevant is the iconic force of some objects, which reinforces the emotional burden of the film, making myths out of nowhere, the daily existence of the invisible importance of sentences in a low voice. A radio, a flashlight, a photo, a katana, a vanished dream of being a star ...
Among Rebel Without a Cause and War and Peace lie the two forces that form the backbone of A Brighter Summer Day , in one case by force of daring modern romantic teenager, and another by the narrative compulsion, by the sincere and thoroughly laudable intention of drawing a prodigious tableau of characters in the context, his world, is completely recognizable and decisive end to end.
Yang passes to comedy
After the monumental A Brighter Summer Day , Edward Yang took time rest in which was devoted to theatrical activities, soon after returning to his favorite medium morphed into a comedy director. We must not be misleading, because this fickleness of lightness only going to last two films, to return later with Yi Yi the intimate drama in which so well moving. For this reason it may consider A Confucian Confusion (1994) and Mahjong (1996) cousins. Are the two plays by Edward Yang, in which, however, is still playing with gender and showing how thoroughly the concerns that run through the rest of his work. The association is restricted, therefore, the tone of lightness, breaking all previous and a coral structure orchestrated around a much faster rate than usual, sometimes even frantic. Yang proved to be a completely versatile director without losing any of authorship, because it gets great results with this leaflet to find another way to approach contemporary problems of Taiwanese society.
A Confucian Confusion meant a break with the intimate tone of his first trilogy Europeanized as Tolstoy's ambition A Brighter Summer Day . It seems that now the look is closer to the screwball comedy American than any other genre. Many of the themes of this subgenre (as locally and attached to a particular historical moment) are present in A Confucius Confusion and framed view is particularly striking in a society so different from American. As opposed to all the features of classical oriental character, dominated by the submission, the spirit of sacrifice, peace and calm, we see here some hysterical characters, slaves to their ambitions, eager for competition, in which the spirit of Zen has been minimized almost to disappear. If Confucius returned to Taiwan today ...
The film is light, but he never hides his load deep allegorical and undergoes meticulous dissection to close some of the most pressing problems of a country that has not been able to flash some changes too fast to be assimilated by the people. Neuroses of the characters do believe, at times, Edward Yang has now become the best Woody Allen, who was able to talk about the great issues of his time with a lightness that made him win only reach. In addition, it remains Edward Yang, continues to compose these frames that are much more eloquent than pages of dialogue; intimate search is not never judge his creatures, still investigating the integration of feelings in the urban landscape, still rolling the exciting night scenes, and still think their country out loud.
Mahjong is a film that might try to be more serious than before, and touches of comedy are dosed more carefully. Since this is not a screwball comedy , but rather to a reformulation of the codes that combine humor with the police or action genres. With some similarities to The Terrorizer , but much less serious Mahjong is consistent with his Westernized style (in line with Confucius Confusion A) by trying to provide an external view on Taiwan, played by some European characters mingle with the locals turning his surprise at it again a weapon of vitality and freshness (especially the girl, Martha, played by Virginie Ledoyen).
Yang This comedy hides a bold social criticism, mixing and putting the same level as the big businessmen and capitalists of the island and vulgar criminals. All seek their own benefit, but the latter is still hope to track down some last vestiges of humanity. True, the character of the French girl is a pure stereotype, completely idealized, but no more so than the eastern side represent archetypes turned inside out. Yang used the cartoon to try to reveal the truth that lies beneath the mountains of money, those that can not see the forest.
Finally, A Confucian Confusion Mahjong and two great comedies that may surprise framed in the work of its director, but that brings hope in the possibilities of a genre that increasingly looks plus a residue of the past or raw materials operating in series. Moreover, pose a great gateway to the great masterpiece that concludes the career of Edward Yang: that movie compendium of themes, ideas, obsessions and aesthetic inclinations which is the vast and incomprehensible Yi Yi.
Yi Yi: Will and close
But Yi Yi is much more than a will, a compendium of ideas or a fresh global intimate concerns family of the late twentieth and early twenty-first. Expertise in the direction of Yang, having shot films different type and changing course several times in his career, is beyond doubt, and attains a degree of subtlety that gets you closer than ever to the classic cinema of Ozu, while being aware of the importance of Western influence in both his work as a whole Taiwanese society. But the attitude has changed. Now is not to criticize, satirize, probing the wounds or show dead ends of existential problems, but accept reality and try to modulate it so that the world can become a livable and even sometimes suitable for happiness. To do this, empathy appears to be key, according to Yang, and the desire to want to understand our fellows and fellowship with them. Yi Yi is the film more lively and light-Yang, because the effort is to dismantle the truths and lies of every one to try to uncover the causes of the ills of society. It seems that teaching tactics to the viewer has invested, and instead of attacking the wrong ways, here we attempt to show the possibilities open. The important thing is now to understand, so the characters in the film are treated with so much understanding (even indulgence on occasion), reaching out to all types of audience and trusting in the goodness and the virtues of their souls. Yang seems to favor taking the defects and problems of the existing social organization at all levels (political, economic, family ...) to live as best as possible, both overall and in those small moments of happiness that are the most trivial occasions. The revolution in urban trilogy or the cynicism of his plays seem to have given way in Yi Yi, a gentle wisdom that it is not intended to impose itself as truth. Only one of the truths, one of the many truths observed from different points of view, the central idea of \u200b\u200bthis ensemble film in which every character has an essential role. This perspectivism is a key contemporary cinema (where the Korean Hong Sang Soo fundamental about the name) that it is aware that a single glance can not provide the wealth of a changing world.
Given this perspectivism, is decisive in Yi Yi father figure, NJ, who is articulate about the other characters like pieces of a puzzle. NJ is forced to take in every moment the different points of view mentioned above to understand everything that surrounds it, seems to say Yang, is the only way to move forward without falling into the deep well of the disaster. Besides the father, perhaps the most important at the conceptual level is the youngest son (about eight years), dedicated taking pictures of people's neck to show what they can not see. That philosophy sums up much of what he intends to do with the film director, to show the audience those little slices of life that seem insignificant but then are fundamental, unnoticed among the opaque walls that separate people from the big cities.
Over three hours of Yi Yi, perplexed assist the development of the piece of family life at a time when everything starts to crumble. One marriage, two children, a grandmother, an uncle recently married, and a host of daily adventures treated a subtlety and an impressive talent. The action moves with almost no notice, through ellipsis and off-screen, without any underlining, rocking the audience as a soft lullaby, inviting him to think without ever stand the boredom, noting the universality of conflict that are removed within each citizen.
In one scene from the movie, the father returns home and finds his wife collapsed emotionally, crying in the middle of an existential crisis. Yang fits the absolute understanding that display the two characters off while listening to a discussion that takes place off-screen, in the neighbors' house. The contradictions of the modern world, the paradoxes of the great city, the vagaries of the story townhouses. Many scenes from the film such travel, opening a huge branch of meanings and concepts suggested.
You can see Yi Yi as a mature and updated version of some of the structures and themes already present in The Terrorizer , perhaps with less European influence (Antonioni still present, but further ) and closer to some constants of Oriental cinema classic and last American film. In this sense, the aforementioned Magnolia , Paul Thomas Anderson, filmed just a year ago, is a film very close to Yi Yi, with differences of nerve, arrogance and wisdom imposed by differences in age and professional career between the two filmmakers.
filmmaker Olivier Assayas, friend and colleague of Yang, highlighted a fundamental point of the film in Article [ii] he wrote for the occasion Positif Taiwan's death:
"Yi Yi unveiled the wonderfully fertile Edward contradictions of film making that striking union in which, for the first time a movie completely devoid of the exotic China, fully grounded in the universal humanity, for better and worse, amounted to a Western audience that his characters are recognized in , an audience excited and confused background to be seen there. "
The film is overwhelming in its complexity and its ambitions, so it is best to let each viewer draw their own conclusions a viewing as rich as the one proposed by Edward Yang. Yi Yi meant, finally, a more global appreciation of the work of its creator. It won the prize for best director at Cannes, and numerous publications was highlighted as the best film of the year. Still continues to appear in a bold decisive in the lists that highlight the best films of the decade, and the misfortune is that Yang himself was unable to endorse it with a new creation. As Jaime Pena said in the book of Nosferatu, Edward Yang "was an 'outsider', an outsider who always wary of Taiwan, perhaps the same way he always distrusted his country and his city, Taipei, in who portrayed harshly and irony in many of his films. " The director, in a way that belies in his films, always seemed to feel out the world, both in Taiwan and abroad, and the haven of peace that peered in Yi Yi was just the perfect epilogue to a prolific career short but very exciting.
Edward Yang passed away on June 29, 2007, at age 59, after seven years of inactivity to fight against cancer, and apparently always felt quite alone professionally, lost in a world that just understand it. His films do not triumphed in the audience or between commercial cinema fans, but critics also preferred bolder note to filmmakers Taiwanese apparently cutting edge as Hou Hsiao Hsien and Tsai Ming Liang. Surely, this middle ground, hidden in the shadows, Yang placed in a privileged place from which to deploy their world view in their films without having to satisfy some or others, simply being aware of his own evolution as a person and as a filmmaker.
The spectators always be the memories evoked by their images and ideas detached from their creations. We can never forget those magical night rides a father with his son, nor those exterior facades of buildings that reveal the interior facades of its inhabitants. Do not forget the wet streets, empty apartments, memories of the beach, the whispering of the dream recollections and knots that do not conform to slide into the stomach. Are You Lonesome Tonight? Edward Yang, so tragic, so lyrical.
[ii] Edward Yang et son temps by Olivier Assayas.
Publication: Journal Positif. No. 567 May 2008.N
Translation and adaptation: E. Barriendos to zinema.com
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