| YI YI Director: Edward Yang "The characters in this film arose from things I think about a lot. If we look for ways to reassess our own lives, then the concept of innovation becomes central: what haven’t we done?" Edward Yang from Sight & Sound Yi Yi is a wonderfully engrossing film that exemplifies everything that has been great about New Taiwanese cinema for the past 20 years. Yet, its prosaic subject matter almost belies how great it is since on the surface it seems little more than a three and a half-hour drama about three generations in the life of a Taiwanese family. Director Edward Yang throws in almost every plot circumstance known to drama, yet because of his masterful direction he keeps it well above soap opera conventions and by the end it becomes a moving tribute to the struggles and the survival of each of the individuals in one family. Yi Yi begins with a wedding and ends with a funeral. And in between a boy (Jonathan Chang) begins to come of age, his sister (Kelly Lee) finds her first love, their mother (Elain Jin) and father (Wu Nienjen) separate for a while and in the meantime they all learn how to deal with the boredom and the dilemmas of their troubled lives. Yet for all the familiar dramatic ground that Yi Yi treads it is directed with a graceful skill and a mastery of the medium that weds form with content that is rarely seen in films today. Yi Yi, like a Jacques Tati comedy, begins with a few long take depth stage visual gags but then gets serious. Grandmother goes into a coma and is kept in bed at home. The family is instructed to go in and talk to her but they soon run out of anything much to say. Eventually this ritual becomes a confession, of sorts, as each character seems to be talking to themselves about all their own troubles. The father is the stable center of the family but he too has a past that reveals itself in the course of the movie. It turns out that he left a love behind, who has moved to America, but he keeps in touch with her and, as fate would have it, they unite once again and become reacquainted. The young boy is meant to be the main character since he is the youngest and the one who has the most to learn. He is a very precociously attentive kid who, most likely, is modeled after the director since he is an aspiring photographer. There are many things that set Yi Yi apart from other films which share a similar subject. First, is the cinematic style, which relies on a camera that is set at a distance from the action and utilizes many long, long takes that let the audiences absorb the characters and the milieu of each scene. The other is the acting style that is so close to realistic that the film feels closer to a documentary than a fictional film. Yang, with his lengthy takes, lets us share the space with the characters thus enabling us to relate to the lonliness and frustrations of their lives.. The great thing about this style is that the action and the acting aren’t forced on the audience. Similar to the power of a great novel the audience gets to form its own thoughts and in turn they can fully realize the action as it happens. Of course, the opposite argument could be made too because films such as Yi Yi demand a certain amount of patience that many who are accustomed to TV and Hollywood don’t feel we have time for. Yi Yi is about many contrasting themes including love and hate, life and death, selfishness and sacrifice. It is also about the cycles of life that bond each generation together. In short, it’s about everything and because of that its 173-minute running time is more than justified. Director Yang gives us a lot but nothing feels superfluous. Now, if only members of the Academy can recognize this Yi Yi would be a shoe in for best Foreign Language film of the year. - Matt Langdon |
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