It’s telling that the full-page write up in the 1001 text of Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day (1991) mentions not a single performance in the film. Yang worked primarily with nonprofessionals on this lengthy project, and few went on to star in other films. Speculation can be dangerous in film reviews but is often necessary, and I’d be willing to bet that he cast his film hoping to avoid any chance that a single performance might overshadow the somewhat complex story. This is a plausible side effect of casting name actors in any film, but such talents can also anchor a story and give it its center. As it stands, A Brighter Summer Day is without any such focal point.
At nearly four hours, this is a movie that tries to be about so much that it ends up being about very little. It concerns the lives of adolescent immigrants in 1960 Taipei, the children of men and women who escaped mainland China and communism only to find new hardships on the coastal island. Much of the film’s underlying tension comes from a cultural emphasis on education. The boys on whom it focuses are under pressure from their parents to pass exams that would allow them to transfer from military-sponsored night school into a collegiate-prep day school. While individually most of them disregard the importance of their education, a few do take their parents’ wishes seriously. Still, academics often take a back seat to the activities of the street gangs that most of them belong to. While the actions that these groups engage in range dramatically in the scope of their legality, the basic emphasis on belonging to a group of any sort, particularly as members of a Diaspora, is clear. Even street nicknames, some as juvenile as “Cat,” “Airplane,” and “Honey,” note the importance of status within their youth subculture. Adolescence in 1960, in Taipei or otherwise, seems to be a hallmark of cinema. Both sex and Rock n’ Roll have their part to play in this film, and its title is taken from the verses of Elvis Presley’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight,” which the youngest member of the gang tries ceaselessly to translate. The presence of these elements in A Brighter Summer Day has drawn critical comparison to Rebel without a Cause (1955), but I noted a stronger connection to West Side Story (1961), particularly in a powerful scene in which a long-absent gang leader returns world weary and with a message of peace. Both films end with a tragic death and – musical difference aside – are about the questions of loyalty that arise when a woman somehow infiltrates a male-dominated conflict.
Thematically, loyalty is the center of the film, but it nevertheless lacks a character lead. Though one boy’s story may receive the most attention he is not necessarily the most engaging figure here. Perhaps this can again be explained through speculation. Though the events portrayed in A Brighter Summer Day are true, they are not specifically the story of the characters we see. Yang himself lived through this story, and was thirteen in 1960 when these events took place. His parents too had immigrated to Taipei from mainland China to flee Mao’s reign. I think that essentially, what the audience sees here is his own speculation, after personal experience and intense research, into what happened in that city at that time.
I don’t think that this is a good film. I think that perhaps Yang’s close proximity to the story, physically and emotionally, prevented him from cutting its lesser elements. As such, it is multiple stories and subplots adrift in a four hour ocean. There are two, maybe even three, good films within A Brighter Summer Day, but totaled it is much less than the sum of its parts. Yang went on to make a film that far outshines this one. At 173 minutes I wanted still more of his Yi Yi (2000), his final movie before succumbing to cancer in 2007.
Language: Mandarin
Runtime: 237 Minutes
Available @Video.google.com
Grade: 1.5 Hats Off
0 comments:
Post a Comment