A Time to Live a Time to Die
Dust in the Wind
City of Sadness
The Puppetmaster
Flowers from Shanghai
Daughter of the Nile
Good Men, Good Women
Goodbye South, Goodbye
1) The story itself
2) The formalistic properties via editing and camera shots
3) The personal history shown as a poetic elipsis.
4) Life being lived in general.
Hou Hsiao-hsien is one of the few filmmakers whose films do not work on television. Part of the reason is because he frames people and events from furthur away than most other directors. On television all the people who occupy the frames of his films seem far away and are so small that it's like viewing a postage stamp of The Mona Lisa from across a room. Hence it is difficult to grasp the meaning of his stories.
Some who see Hou Hsiao-hsien's films may feel they lack passion or emotion but his focus is more on the major themes and issues of life than strictly on a plot driven narrative. The stories he tells are not about heros or villains but rather about regular people who live their lives day to day and who are often caught up in the maelstrom of history.
Unlike most of my favorite directors I do not find Hou's films immediately gratifying. After seeing one of his films I have to go home and think about them for a couple days. This isn't something that most distributors or producers want to hear and because of it none of his films have been commercially been released in the U.S.
The formalistic aspects of Hou's work effectively underscore his themes. In his early films such as A Time to Live A Time to Die and Dust in The Wind he paces the film to the beat of a long summer afternoon. And even though there is plot, character and conflict development not much seems to happen except that life is being lived. But it is significant because it helps establish what each character goes through on a daily basis.In almost every scene of Hou's movies people in the foreground and background can be seen smoking, drinking, eating or working. Most filmmakers use these too but not to the same effect as Hou who wants to show us that these are the things that are so central to the lives of the(working) people who's story he tells. Sometimes this effect is artless especially in Dust in The Wind, where the things that happen to the main characters are no more significant than wind blowing through the trees. Even serious hearbreak is given little attention. The main character in the story loses his girlfriend while he is in the Army. It's a big blow to him but when he comes back home after so many years it's not mentioned instead all he and his grandfather talk about is the weather and the failed garden. These are the things that ultimately are more important.
In The Puppetmastert the camera is fixed at a distance andHou hems the characters in with a double and sometimes triple frame. Characters are seen from the next room or behind door frames. It's an ironic framing device because even though the frame seems to contain freedom it, in fact, shows just how locked down the characters are within the (indoor and outdoor) environment of their lives. Due to this technique, the audience may feel, at times, as though they are observing a documentary rather than a fiction film. An example of this comes in a scene toward the end of The Puppetmaster where a woman is giving birth. We hear her labor pains, but we don't see her. The camera is set up in front of the house and what we see are relatives, friends and neighbors milling about as if nothing much is happening. One man sways in a rocking chair smoking a pipe, another is hanging laundry. Eventually someone carrying a fish enters the frame and curiously walks into the house.
The use of ellipsis is most effective in The Puppetmaster. The film is based in the highly dramatic life of real-life puppetmaster Li Tien-lu. Li tells his story in voice-over and -- later in the film -- directly to the camera. Hou, unlike most directors who direct bio-pics, relies on the use of poetic ellipsis to show us episodes in Li's life. Although at first confusing the technique builds an accumulative effect in which we are able to fill in the blanks about Li's life and the events that surround him.. We fill in the blanks also because Hou gives us just enough information for us to complete the meaning of the film. Hou explains; "I prefer to let the spectator interpret what he sees, let him make his inner journey. One can compare this to the effect that some drugs have. The loss of understanding is inevitable, but I don't consider this very important. I work the moment, the sensation. Everone should be able to find in my movie what he wants." This is not the kind of response you would expect from Spielbeg or Stone who prefer to lead us by the hand from scene to scene.
Sometimes Hou's films can be quite challenging. Take City of Sadness for instance a film about how a family is affected by Taiwan's independence and the subsequent 1947 massacre. The history is complex even if you do understand it but so to is Hou's style, which can be difficult to follow.
