Just as there is a prologue giving us an overview of Taiwan's history there should be a prologue that describes Hou's narrative style. The one thing you need to know, so you won't be too confused, is that when Hou shows us a distant shot of a landscape that means time has passed.
Another of his more 'difficult' films is The Flowers of Shanghai. More than a few of our finest critics have called this film 'perfect.' But to me it is, instead, an extemely controlled piece of cinema. The film last 1 hour 45 minutes and consists of 37 single take scenes which are all braketed by fade ins and fade outs. The framing, the movements of the camera as well as the faintly anarchonistic music track are all paced to the metronomic movments of an elegant mobius strip.
Set in the brothers of late 19th century Shanghai the film deals with various women (flowergirls) and men each of whom wants something better for their lives but none of whom can break the opium like spell of their lives. They seem to do nothing but partake in daily rituals and occupy space. The film is similar in ways to Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern but where they differ is in the story that's told. In Zhang's film it's pretty obvious whose using who and who is suffering. In Hou's film everybody is being used by the system and everybody suffers but, at the same time, they don't seem aware of it. They simply exist in an enclosed zen-like world.
An amazing site about City of Sadness from CinemaSpace Berkeley.
A good article by Magnola Dargis of the LA Weekly
