KINO OBSCURA

Forever Young

Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day (牯岭街少年杀人事件)

David Liu | 16 January 2011

Like his turn-of-the-century work Yi Yi: A One and a Two, Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day (1991) unfolds as a panoramic, generation-spanning narrative, delicately straddling the extraordinary and the quotidian. With over 100 speaking parts and a running time of 237 minutes, A Brighter Summer Day is vast in scope, crystallizing the sociopolitical malaise of 1960s Taipei through the eyes of its wayward youth. 

Yang’s indignance toward the suppression of history is evident from the film’s very first shot: A light bulb illuminates a dark room before segueing into stark title cards, establishing the film’s historical context. Over a decade has passed since the Kuomintang lost control of mainland China, and the ensuing Taiwan diaspora has resulted in an island state rumbling with cultural conflict. This displacement of identity carries over to an emerging generation of young people, their formative years defined by either acceptance to prestigious schools or allegiance to powerful street gangs.

Inspired by the director’s own childhood memories of Taiwan’s first recorded teenage murder case, A Brighter Summer Day centers on Xiao Si’r, played by 14-year-old Chang Chen in his feature debut. Demure and laconic by nature, Xiao Si’r is the second youngest of five children born to native Shanghainese parents. His headstrong attitude lands him in trouble with both the school administration and the young, influential gangsters that populate the school. A violent gang war looms as Xiao Si’r falls into a complex web of friendships and rivalries — the loyal Cat, the philosophical Honey, the fearless Xiao Ma, the beautiful but fickle Xiao Ming, amongst others.

Impeccably paced and richly novelistic, A Brighter Summer Day mourns the existential crisis faced by people of all ages and backgrounds in the face of historical upheaval. Just as Xiao Si’r’s parents find themselves trapped between the irrevocable past and the uncertain future, so too do Xiao Si’r and his compatriots grow increasingly frustrated over their inability to change the course of the world around them. As a work of art, A Brighter Summer Day is at once tender and violent, intellectual and irrational, reasoned and ruthless; that the film conveys these dialectical engagements with such savage beauty owes as much to its stunning adolescent performers as it does to the late Yang’s mastery of lighting, composition and visual space.

Though it lacks the intelligent, world-weary nuance of Yi Yi, A Brighter Summer Day succeeds in crafting an intensely personalized vision of history, one that operates to its own mercurial pulse. Using a combination of graceful long takes, deliberate frames and precise transitions, Yang maintains an acute balance between security and instability — and through a collection of medium and long shots, between intimacy and alienation.

Expertly sustained throughout the film’s long duration, these techniques impart a sense of enlightenment on the actions and words of Yang’s characters, and to the film’s own bittersweet cycle of love and death, recklessness and diffidence, hope and despair.

Dear Edward

Tonight was a fairly nondescript summer evening, save for one occasion: I once again witnessed the miracle of everyday life perfectly captured on celluloid. Watching Yi Yi: A One and a Two again with family, I felt the same vibes of happiness and desperation sweep over me, much as they did the first time I saw your film.

Tell me. How did you do it? Of all the filmmakers I’ve been fortunate enough to meet  and those I dream to converse with in the future, you will forever remain elusive, untouchable. If a half-century of life experience can result in an achievement of such commanding beauty and elegance, what does that leave us as human beings to aspire to? “Ancora imparo,” scribbled Michelangelo in his 85th year: “I am still learning.”

Thank you for speaking for all of us through little Yang-Yang’s sublime final scene: “I know so little.”

Edward Yang (杨德昌)
6 November 1947 - 29 June 2007