chaos-rampant Another film about middle-class people trying to cope with the same anxieties as the rest of us, this one set in Taiwan. A marriage and a grandmother falling sick initiate the two strands of life, one hoped to build up to something, the other a sadness that everything in the end dissolves.What kind of life is hoped for? Contact, connection. Only it's not rosy, there's duplicity and heartbreak, husbands and girlfriends who frivolously share their intimacy. What dissolution? Truthful connection eludes them, relationships don't blossom. None of this is turned into tearjerking, the heartbreak is quieter, the duplicity no real surprise.This mellow distance is more directly after Ozu, the film is about family and scenes of life much like he was. Ozu left two questions open in his own work. One was dispassionate observation from a distance but the moral had to be forced on us, usually a speech by an elder relative.Here it's all marvelously sublimated in the weave. One strand of story will be about love and this strand will be woven through many different situations, a schoolboy, a teenage girl, adults, and it's this weaving much more so than any story arch that gives it shape, creates flow, prompts contrasts and reflections. Nothing needs to be said, all we need to do is trace the calligraphy. Malick's and Tarkovsky's calligraphy is in the eye and choreography of things that glide from it; Zulawski's and Jancso's is also both in the eye and things. Here the eye is still, the illusion of natural life is maintained, the calligraphy entirely in the perception that arises from one scene to the next, in the repositioning of bodies, gestures, steps taken. Some excellent work.Ozu's other conundrum and more difficult of the two was narrative time. He was slow and aimless; I'm not too sure if hoping to capture some real rhythm of life or a meditative view. Anyhow this was quietly preparing the tea room where two people will sit, only the room for it. There was usually one crucial event in Ozu, often marriage. Having invested, we went around the bend with clarity, experiencing it as life instead of story. He tried this more times than he actually managed.I found this as unfocused as Ozu in this aspect. It slowly prepares room over time but there are scores of characters, situations, dilemmas of importance to each. It's simply that the plenitude and length imposed on the experience work against a concentrated view. Someone can say that life sprawls like this but then again not; you live through your life and not a dozen ones at the same time all around the city. So there are 3-4 films woven together here that I would love to see in their own right. First between them the one that culminates with a man and woman in Japan, each one the other's love of a lifetime that never happened, but the man has to stay on this side of her door, she has to close it.

Jackson Booth-Millard Featuring in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die I was naturally going to watch this Taiwanese film regardless, and I was prepared to sit through a nearly three hour length if it turned out to be good. Basically this film is all about the Taipei family, focusing on three members of the family and their perspectives as they go through various difficult, meaningful and poignant moments in life. These are the middle-aged father N.J. (Nien-Jen Wu), young son Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang) and teenage daughter Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee), as they start the film with a wedding, and the conclusion is a funeral. So N.J. has a job he is unhappy with, and desires to make a big deal in the Japanese video game industry, and unable to get his partners all on side he finds support from software mogul Ota (Issei Ogata), and he has former lover Sherry (Su-Yun Ko) trying to enter the fray. Son Yang-Yang is having trouble with teachers and stuff at school, and his daughter is in a love triangle with a neighbour and her troubled boyfriend. All this goes on while N.J.'s old mother in law is in a coma, his wife left for Buddhist retreat after having a midlife crisis, and overweight brother in law Ah-Di (Hsi-Sheng Chen) marries a film star and has to deal with extended family. I will be completely honest and say that I did not fully understand everything going on, because it has so many layers and situations to take in and make sense of. Also starring Elaine Jin as Min-Min, Adriene Lin as Li-Li and Pang Chang Yu as Fatty. I think the length was a slight issue for me, and it did add to the fact that I didn't know everything that was going on, but for some really good visual stuff, some interesting dialogue to see and listen to (a little English) and some social realism it is a watchable drama. Very good!

drinkinggreentea There is an eight year-old boy in Yi Yi who reminds me of myself as a child. His name is Yang Yang. He is a Taiwanese little guy and he's as cute as any kid in the movies. Like me, he speaks seldom, but his head is full of thoughts. Often, he doesn't even answer when a family member or a teacher asks him a question. His longest speech by far comes at the end of the film when he approaches his Grandmother's coffin and reads several sentences he's painstakingly written out in his school notebook. What he says there is truly worth hearing, and I won't spoil it by telling you anymore about it.Instead I'll tell you about another thing he says to his. He asks, "Can we only know half the truth?" He explains that he has noticed that he can never see what's behind him, only what's ahead of him. The father is impressed by the question, but unable to answer it. At the heart of this movie is this Taiwanese family of four: The father, NJ, the mother, Min Min, a teenage daughter named Ting Ting, and little Yang Yang. They are a middle class family who always treat each other with gentleness and respect. There is little evidence of disharmony between them- only a hint that there isn't a strong emotional connection between Mom and Dad; respect, yes, but perhaps not love. All four of them are good people who try to treat others with dignity. Yet, though they are a family and they live together, though they care about one another, they never know more than half the truth about each other. Each of them goes through a series of deeply affecting experiences and for the most part they go through it alone. The family may have a sense that something is up, but they don't really know what.NJ is a partner in an electronics firm. He started the company with a university friend but now years later it's apparent that they are very different men. When the company is in negotiations with a Japanese video game developer named Ota, the partner suggests that NJ be the one to take Ota for dinner. "You're good at acting honest." "Is that what we're doing when we're being honest," NJ asks, "Acting?" NJ is not initially enthused about the partnership with Ota but he is taken by surprise when he meets the man. They are kindred spirits, men of integrity. NJ is able to tell Ota some things that he may never have said to anyone else. There is a special treat here for English speaking audiences- because Ota and NJ do not speak each other's languages, they speak to one another in English. The fact that their English is not perfect in no way impedes the power of the profound things they say to one another. In fact, in some way it enhances it.Min Min is NJ's wife and she works at some kind of large firm. Early in the film her mother falls into a coma and Min Min insists that everyone in the family will take turns speaking to Grandma. She is upset when Yang Yang doesn't want to do it, but when she comes to take her turn she finds that she has little to say. She is confronted by a hard question. Can the whole story of my day be told in three rather dull sentences? Do I really have nothing else to communicate? She decides to go to a monastery in search of meaning, and throughout much of the movie she is significant by her absence.Ting Ting is a gentle teenage girl who carries a very deep hurt that she only reveals to her Grandma. The rest of the family has no idea. Perhaps if they knew they might be able to help her through it, but who knows about that? Sometimes our family can share our grief and lighten our burden, but at other times they can make it worse. Ting Ting may be too ashamed to let anyone know. I won't say where that thread of the story goes, but it's worth following it to its completion. Ting Ting is also involved in what, in the ordinary order of things, would be the most astounding and disturbing event in the entire movie. But in this film it almost passes unnoticed. One senses that the rest of the family may not even know it's happened.Finally, little Yang Yang- he suffers from the kinds of things that happen to many little kids, but even though they are typical troubles they are no less painful. His family doesn't know what's going on with him, and even when they think they do, they are frequently wrong. He lacks the words to explain so he just stares at the floor and keeps his thoughts to himself. Yang Yang is also on a mission, or perhaps several missions. The audience is let in on the secret of many of the things he's up to, but even we are not allowed to understand all of it. The family knows less, but if they pay attention, every once in a while he opens a window into his soul and tells them something important. Although there are some extraordinary events that happen over the course of the film, most of what takes place is strictly in the realm of the ordinary. It shows us that everyday events are packed with as much power as the events that make the news, and the burdens of an eight year old are as heavy as those of a grown man. It reminds us that we may never understand how happy or sad things are for the person sitting across the breakfast table from us.

evanston_dad "Yi yi" is a lovely film, pulsing with warmth and humanity. It tells the story of a Taiwanese family coping with the everyday fears and anxieties of which life is made. In the end, the movie suggests, there are no trivial moments in our lives, even if they seem so at the time -- any one person's life is an accumulation of both the trivial and the significant. What makes it worth getting out of bed every day is the fact that we will never live a day exactly like the one before it.The structure of "Yi yi" mirrors its theme -- the film is a gradual accumulation of quiet moments that build toward something deeply moving. We watch the father of the household reconnect with an old flame, only to see his disappointment when the realities of his past don't match his idealized memories of them. We watch the mother battle depression and the overwhelming sense that she lives day to day doing nothing with herself or her life. She seeks meaning by leaving her family to spend time at a religious commune, but she learns that the answers she's looking for aren't to be found there. We watch the adolescent daughter timidly flirt with sex and dating, a young girl only beginning to unearth the complexities of what it means to become an adult. But my favorite character is the 8-year-old son, who takes pictures with his camera because he wants to show other people what they're not able to see for themselves. He's a little boy who is old enough to understand that there are things he can tell people that they don't already know, but he's too young yet to know how to communicate those things. One has to wonder if this character is the young alter-ego of the film's writer and director, Edward Yang."Yi yi" isn't flashy. It doesn't intertwine all of these characters' story lines with clever narrative sleight of hand; it doesn't pile coincidences on top of coincidences like these multi-narrative ensemble films frequently do. It's not histrionic, and it doesn't build to some overheated climax. It's not interested in doing any of those things. It unfolds the way life unfolds, and it makes us deeply care about these people, and even makes us love them in a way, flaws and all. It reminded me very much of an Ozu film, with its static camera that chooses to sit back and observe rather than tell us how to feel."Yi yi" feels like a modest work of art while you're watching it, but it lingers in the head and its power builds the longer you have to muse over it. It's the kind of movie I have a feeling we'll look back on in twenty years and recognize as a masterpiece.Grade: A+