Edward Yang Weekend (1)

Not much blogging hereabouts this week - that is to say - none. Late nights, you know. Halfway through the Edward Yang/Wu Nien-Jen series I've mentioned before. Still to see the 2 films I would have put at the top of that list - Terrorizer and A Brighter Summer Day. Coming this weekend. Have now seen That Day at the Beach and Taipei Story - plus Wu's Borrowed Life. They are all they are advertised to be. I will have to come back ad write up something more about them - I should have the material: my notes about the films have tended to take off in every direction at once, so I ought to get some content... For now just note - Yang was an ambitious and accomplished director from the very start - That Day at the Beach is a complex, detailed story that he handles with aplomb - it's got a more lush, melodramatic look to it than his later work, probably due to having Christopher Doyle as DP (his first film also). There are hints of Doyle's later style in it - handheld camera work, the dense spaces and lighting effects, the dreamines, characters swallowed by light and darkness that marks his mature style... Yang's style is harder edged, clearer - full of reflective, shining surface - characters swallowed by the spaces, the buildings, what have you. All of which is present in Taipei Story - along with the overpowering presence of modern Taipei - the buildings, traffic, the people, etc.

Meanwhile - Wu Nien-jen was at the screenings, showing his film A Borrowed Life, and talking about that film and Yang's films. He's the of Yi Yi and the writer of That Day on the Beach, and one of the driving forces behind the Taiwanese films of the 80s - producing, writing films like Dust in the Wind and City of Sadness, etc... Borrowed Life (Chinese title, Duo Sang, meaning "Father") is quite a bit like those films, or other of Hou Hsiao-hsien's realist 80s films (A Time to Live a Time to Die, say.) It is the story of Wu's father, a miner, born at the end of the 20s, during the Japanese control of Taiwan. Wu called that generation the "orphan generation" - educated by the Japanese, that they were Japanese - then, as he sad, learning in 1945 that they were Chinese. This film is less explicit than City of Sadness, say, about the idea that Japanese occupation of Taipei was replaced, effectively, by mainland Chinese occupation of Taiwan - but the idea is there. The film itself is a long, slow examination of village life, the lives of the characters, both the miners and their children, who move away, and modernize... It looks a lot like Hou Hsiao-hsien - with less of the mastery of the medium, but Wu is a solid director, who knows how to present his stories... A fine film.

Anyway - more to come - more films - more commentary I hope. But I wanted to get some of these thoughts down now - the longer I wait, the more I'm inclined to procrastinate further. But right now, I'm procrastinating going to bed, so good night world!