On a Blurb
When I added on my graduate student profile a phantom-like, perhaps somewhat non-existing interest in Taiwanese literature and film, absence is not always wished for.
Maybe because of how sometime ago, I had been inducted to this place by someone whom spoke little Chinese but to whom I spoke a lot to. Maybe because of that particular director of that city at which that brief correspondence was last abandoned.
Tonight I watched Yi Yi, by director Edward Yang. The name had sounded really familiar and because of a certain ill-formed knack, I rented the video before a wonderful dinner with Sam, whom I miss already, and his friend Dan.
Beginning with a wedding, clapped in with a baby shower and ending with a funeral, Yang, like Hou Hsiao-Hsien and of course, Tsai Ming-Liang, is remarkable in suspending 3-hour registers. Centered around a Taipei middle-class family and its occassional forays into next-door neighbours and a Japanese businessman, 'Yi Yi' is all about our curiosity of what lies behind us, over and above what happens alongside and around. The family's youngest member, Yang Yang, moves the narration, admist subjections and bullys in school -- a whisp of Trauffaut there -- with his photographs of the back of people's heads. His reluctance to speak to his grandmother lying in coma translates into the question of what we can say to a loved one when all that can be said are already known.
The grandmother's coma foregrounds the compulsion to repeat. The father's withdrawal from his computer-software business, the mother's breakdown after realising that she merely needs 3-minutes to sum up her day to her mother, the daughter's overly-optimistic views of her neighbour's love life, the latter's drive for attention, and the good-for-nothing brother-in-law's constant reliance on horoscopes, fortune-telling, and small-time cheatings. Much of these repetitions work side by side, with the father's reunion with his first lover paralled by the daughter's failed attempt to garner the equivalent for herself. Towards the end, the mother returns from her Buddhist retreat and realises that there, her role became that of her own mother in coma, where people speak to her of the same things, day after day. Her husband, after having his closure with his first lover, realises that he will cease to wonder what might have happened with his first love if not for the fact that he can always go on asking, "what if..."
At the grandfather's funeral, eight-year old Yang Yang reads to the open casket his reasons for not willing to speak, earlier. "Grandmother, I'm sorry. It wasn't that I didn't want to talk to you. I don't know what else to say to you that you already not know. Just like when I ask them now where you've gone, they tell me that it's to a place that I will know when I grow up. Since it is true that I do not know so many things now, I want to grow up and tell these things to people. This is what I want to do when I grow up. It'll be so much fun. Perhaps, one day I'll then find out where you've gone, for real. Grandmother, I miss you, especially when I look at my little cousin who still does not have a name [because his father is still looking for the most auspicious one], I know what you meant when you always used to say that you felt old. I really want to tell him that I feel old too."
---
I walked out of the cinema that day and told Matt, that Yang Yang must have wanted to grow up to be a film-maker. Yes, I think that was what I said. So, there, it was true, I have watched Yi Yi before. I just remembered more of what I had said about it.
Please watch this film , again or not.
---
Tony Raynes, in his commentary of new Taiwanese cinema in general and Yi Yi in particular, says that like all "new" anything, they all break up. "There is no "new" Taiwanese films to speak of, today." I would like to know how Yang Yang will feel about that.
Maybe because of how sometime ago, I had been inducted to this place by someone whom spoke little Chinese but to whom I spoke a lot to. Maybe because of that particular director of that city at which that brief correspondence was last abandoned.
Tonight I watched Yi Yi, by director Edward Yang. The name had sounded really familiar and because of a certain ill-formed knack, I rented the video before a wonderful dinner with Sam, whom I miss already, and his friend Dan.
Beginning with a wedding, clapped in with a baby shower and ending with a funeral, Yang, like Hou Hsiao-Hsien and of course, Tsai Ming-Liang, is remarkable in suspending 3-hour registers. Centered around a Taipei middle-class family and its occassional forays into next-door neighbours and a Japanese businessman, 'Yi Yi' is all about our curiosity of what lies behind us, over and above what happens alongside and around. The family's youngest member, Yang Yang, moves the narration, admist subjections and bullys in school -- a whisp of Trauffaut there -- with his photographs of the back of people's heads. His reluctance to speak to his grandmother lying in coma translates into the question of what we can say to a loved one when all that can be said are already known.
The grandmother's coma foregrounds the compulsion to repeat. The father's withdrawal from his computer-software business, the mother's breakdown after realising that she merely needs 3-minutes to sum up her day to her mother, the daughter's overly-optimistic views of her neighbour's love life, the latter's drive for attention, and the good-for-nothing brother-in-law's constant reliance on horoscopes, fortune-telling, and small-time cheatings. Much of these repetitions work side by side, with the father's reunion with his first lover paralled by the daughter's failed attempt to garner the equivalent for herself. Towards the end, the mother returns from her Buddhist retreat and realises that there, her role became that of her own mother in coma, where people speak to her of the same things, day after day. Her husband, after having his closure with his first lover, realises that he will cease to wonder what might have happened with his first love if not for the fact that he can always go on asking, "what if..."
At the grandfather's funeral, eight-year old Yang Yang reads to the open casket his reasons for not willing to speak, earlier. "Grandmother, I'm sorry. It wasn't that I didn't want to talk to you. I don't know what else to say to you that you already not know. Just like when I ask them now where you've gone, they tell me that it's to a place that I will know when I grow up. Since it is true that I do not know so many things now, I want to grow up and tell these things to people. This is what I want to do when I grow up. It'll be so much fun. Perhaps, one day I'll then find out where you've gone, for real. Grandmother, I miss you, especially when I look at my little cousin who still does not have a name [because his father is still looking for the most auspicious one], I know what you meant when you always used to say that you felt old. I really want to tell him that I feel old too."
---
I walked out of the cinema that day and told Matt, that Yang Yang must have wanted to grow up to be a film-maker. Yes, I think that was what I said. So, there, it was true, I have watched Yi Yi before. I just remembered more of what I had said about it.
Please watch this film , again or not.
---
Tony Raynes, in his commentary of new Taiwanese cinema in general and Yi Yi in particular, says that like all "new" anything, they all break up. "There is no "new" Taiwanese films to speak of, today." I would like to know how Yang Yang will feel about that.
posted by msl at 1:58 AM
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