Review: Yi Yi (2000)
★★★★★: a profoundly moving, nuanced and visually striking masterpiece
“My uncle says we live three times as long since man invented movies.”
“How can that be?”
“It means movies give us twice what we get from daily life.”
Written and directed by the masterfully poetic Edward Yang, Yi Yi follows the struggles of three generations of a middle-class Taiwanese family, the Jians, living in the vibrant city of Taipei. Over the course of this drama, three major events will shake an intricate familial web: opening with a contentious wedding and closing with a solemn and introspective funeral. An utterly captivatingly subtle story of grief, heartbreak, and reconciliation that I simply cannot fault. This film is frequently listed on ‘Best Films Ever’ lists, and with good reason. It is exceptional and deserves all the awards and accolades it has received, and many, many more.
On the surface, father NJ (Wu Nien-Jen) appears placid and diligent, but his heart is weighed down by nostalgia, memories of lost love, and the paths not taken - sentiments resonant with the middle-aged feeling like spectators in their own lives. Similarly, rocked by Grandma’s (Tang Ru-Yun) sudden illness heavily insinuated to be related to superstitious son A-Di’s (Chen Hsi-Sheng) hasty wedding to a pregnant girlfriend, Min-Min (Elaine Jin) is forced to confront her own demons at her mother’s bedside. Meanwhile, eldest daughter Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee), a shy girl on the cusp of womanhood, balances an increasingly strained and disconcerting home life, with the pressures of adolescence looming large, both literally and figuratively; promiscuous mother-and-daughter neighbours threaten to tumble her headlong into trouble.
Edward Yang deploys a dialectic narrative style which follows the overwhelming pressure each character experiences on their individual trajectories. Comatose Grandma becomes their confessor, as the family is encouraged to speak, setting the scene of some of the most beautiful deliveries of the entire film. Sometimes, speaking to her offers relief to the characters; mostly, it’s an opportunity to vocalise their deepest fears, thus fleshing out the vulnerable humanity of this family.
"It's hard for me to mumble like this. I hope you won't be offended when I say it's like praying. I'm not sure if the other party can hear me, and I'm not sure if I'm sincere enough. Frankly, there's very little I'm sure about these days. I wake up feeling unsure about almost everything. And I wonder... why I wake up at all, just to face the same uncertainties again and again. Would you want to wake up if you were me?"
But it’s the words of the cheeky and boisterous ‘baby’ of the Jian clan, son Yang-Yang (Jonathon Chang), who aptly synthesises the essence of life, in a naïve yet perfunctory way that only children can express. His inquisitive nature manifests as a preoccupation with half-truths, and more specifically, our inability to see the back of our own heads. By extension, humans only know half of themselves. The importance of duality making a whole, so to speak, is best encapsulated by the film’s Chinese title as read in Pinyin characters: literally a one and a two ("一" + "一" = "二").” Perspective is everything. And thus, wise little Yang-Yang sets out to resolve this metaphysical dilemma, armed with a camera. The shots of the backs of people’s heads made me oddly emotional at seeing the ‘full truth’. Gradually, each member of the Jian family will come to know their personal ‘truth’, whether it’s following a spiritual retreat, or reliving youth, bringing a sense of closure and contentment that permeates through the screen. But it’s Yang-Yang, whether it is through his quirky polaroids or haunting monologues, that comes to this realisation first, making this young one’s performance stellar.
Not to mention, each frame is a work of breathtakingly beautiful art. Indisputably, Edward Yang is an artistic genius. I especially enjoyed the ‘gilded cage’ shots of window reflections and the depiction of Taipei at the turn of the century, the heart of a fundamentally dualistic country. Chronicling Taiwan’s cultural and socio-economic transformation and intergenerational conflict, I found Yi Yi to be a hallmark of ‘New Taiwanese cinema’.
Prior to watching Yi Yi, the only other Edward Yang film I’d seen was A Brighter Summer’s Day, another stunning film, but during which I found it difficult to stay focused. As someone utterly captivated by themes of urban sadness, lonely cities, the downright mundane, and generally the slice-of-life genre, I definitely favour Yi Yi. Some may struggle with the running time (173 minutes), but it really will depend on your attachment to slow cinema. Either way, I strongly encourage you to watch this epic, especially on a big screen. I was lucky enough to watch it at my packed local cinema, and we burst into a round of applause as the credits rolled. My favourite type of screening. I hope to have more opportunities to enjoy Yang’s work in the future, and if Yi Yi is anything to go by, I expect nothing less than incredibly intimate filmmaking and scriptwriting, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on Yi Yi, and any recs on which Edward Yang films I should watch next.
Yi Yi is currently available on Mubi and The Criterion Collection.
P.S. if any of my readers are as obsessed as I am with filming locations, I strongly recommend you check out the following pages. It’s a niche interest I know, but I love pinning these locations on my Google Maps in hopes that I will be able to visit these places on my travels, take a picture of myself, and generally just geek out about being on location!