With his second appearance on the list, after 'Yi Yi,' director Edward Yang explores Taipei in the early '60s, focusing on a troubled teenager who gets mixed up in a gang war.
This was very helpful, thanks! And started reading the Brodwell link at the bottom, which also seems very useful.
I watched both this and YI YI for the first time last year, and I also immediately loved YI YI and had a much harder time with this. There’s a definite narrative structure here — I could almost glimpse it by the end — but it’s really
really hard to tease out on a first watch (and very unlike YI YI that way), so the film can feel a bit shapeless I thought. But again, that’s probably more on me than on the film itself and I’m sure the narrative shape of the film is a lot more clear on a second viewing. But it’s four hours long!
Again very late but the Chinese title’s not quite a spoiler—the film’s inspired by an infamous murder of a teenage girl but a teenage boy (son of a civil servant), and the whole situation around the killing was pretty enigmatic, which fits with with Si’r’s personality here.
The film really does benefit from knowing something of the period, and even the language. I don’t know much but repeated viewings/reading have definitely elucidated aspects of it for me, e.g. the Little Park Boys being the children of civil servants (and to a lesser extent officers, as in the case of Ma) and the 217s children of soldiers (although Honey’s just disguised as a sailor); civil-military conflict’s everywhere here. It’s also one that really helps if you know the language, even in small ways—the little cartoonishly-frustrated-looking signature, while a bit stylized, is also literally just the characters for “Xiao Si’r.”
That frustration—and inability to even define any sort of positive masculinity in the face of paired histories of political and familial authoritarianism and humilitation—really stood out to me on last viewing, especially considering the really pathetic authoritarian-insecure masculine expression we see all over the place in the US now. Jade’s final conversation with Xiao Si’r’s one of my favorite scenes. She emerges as her own person, something that hasn’t really emerged (because of who our point-of-view passes through) from many of the other female characters. Ming’s motivations are in some ways as obscure as Xiao Si’r’s, but that’s in part because Xiao Si’r hasn’t really considered her point-of-view. Even Xiao Si’r’s attempts at sensitivity are curdled, every emotion seems to lead towards violence as he lacks the tools to make sense of his emotions—like almost every other male figure in the film.
This was very helpful, thanks! And started reading the Brodwell link at the bottom, which also seems very useful.
I watched both this and YI YI for the first time last year, and I also immediately loved YI YI and had a much harder time with this. There’s a definite narrative structure here — I could almost glimpse it by the end — but it’s really
really hard to tease out on a first watch (and very unlike YI YI that way), so the film can feel a bit shapeless I thought. But again, that’s probably more on me than on the film itself and I’m sure the narrative shape of the film is a lot more clear on a second viewing. But it’s four hours long!
Again very late but the Chinese title’s not quite a spoiler—the film’s inspired by an infamous murder of a teenage girl but a teenage boy (son of a civil servant), and the whole situation around the killing was pretty enigmatic, which fits with with Si’r’s personality here.
The film really does benefit from knowing something of the period, and even the language. I don’t know much but repeated viewings/reading have definitely elucidated aspects of it for me, e.g. the Little Park Boys being the children of civil servants (and to a lesser extent officers, as in the case of Ma) and the 217s children of soldiers (although Honey’s just disguised as a sailor); civil-military conflict’s everywhere here. It’s also one that really helps if you know the language, even in small ways—the little cartoonishly-frustrated-looking signature, while a bit stylized, is also literally just the characters for “Xiao Si’r.”
That frustration—and inability to even define any sort of positive masculinity in the face of paired histories of political and familial authoritarianism and humilitation—really stood out to me on last viewing, especially considering the really pathetic authoritarian-insecure masculine expression we see all over the place in the US now. Jade’s final conversation with Xiao Si’r’s one of my favorite scenes. She emerges as her own person, something that hasn’t really emerged (because of who our point-of-view passes through) from many of the other female characters. Ming’s motivations are in some ways as obscure as Xiao Si’r’s, but that’s in part because Xiao Si’r hasn’t really considered her point-of-view. Even Xiao Si’r’s attempts at sensitivity are curdled, every emotion seems to lead towards violence as he lacks the tools to make sense of his emotions—like almost every other male figure in the film.