A Brighter Summer Day
What this movie needs is proper subtitles. The version I have has hard-subbed Chinese and English subtitles – what a strange DVD. XD Sadly the Chinese subtitles are traditional characters, which means that I can barely read them, and the English subtitles are so bad that “Somebody’s there!” got translated into “Who’s that?” Luckily I can understand most by hearing, thank God.
In that respect, I am extremely happy to see that the World Cinema Foundation has restored the film and has been playing it all over the US. Okay, I guess they have been mostly playing the film in Little Asia (San Francisco), We Are Proud To Stand In Line To See A Movie Town (New York) and Quentin-Tarantino-land (Austin). Here’s hoping that they will bring out a good DVD of this.
At this point, I assume that I have already hinted that I find this movie to be quite a masterpiece. Like a few other movies I have seen lately, I wouldn’t add them to my favorites, but this is definitely close. If anything, it is my special love for “Yi Yi” that will prevent this film, which I ultimately am a little less obsessed with, from entering the realms of ultimate goodness. But oh my God, this movie is epic. It wasn’t always easy to watch it (it is 4 hours long after all, and I am amazingly bad at recognizing any faces besides Xiao Si’s and Xiao Ming’s), but it doesn’t take long until the film grows on you. The portrait of these characters is absolutely fascinating, especially as it’s through seemingly everyday life. There is a hint of Godfather in there, a hint of Hongkong gang mobster attitude, a hint of film noir, a hint of war movies, altogether in this high school setting. How could I not like a film like this? (I have not seen “Rebels without a cause” but now I am intrigued to see it even more.)
I have a special affection for film titles which are references to movies and, at some key point in the film, mention the title. Music is a much stronger and reminds me a lot of Jia Zhangke’s “Platform” (though that film is almost a decade younger and I believe there is no apparent connection).
Chang Chen is quite a surprise really. I feel like I have seen him in a million films, and to some degree, that is probably true. But he’s such a child prodigy in the fashion of Jean-Pierre Léaud! I also think that both their first films were their best, “A Brighter Summer Day” and “Les 400 Coups” respectively. These films are strangely similar in their portrait of a repressive school system too!
It is no surprise that the film also seems to be a critics’ favorite. Googling its name mostly gives lengthy, fairly insightful reviews, written by professionals I assume. In general, I agree with them about how the film exudes cynical darkness. But, unlike a typical Coen brothers film, I find the characters in this film strangely likable. Coen brothers films make me feel distant to those characters, it’s like an exercise in “This is how other people are”. Yang’s movies are about us, about our own society and how we are or at least could have been. Both are highly interesting – one because it gives us a new perspective on others, and the other because we get a new perspective on ourselves. And both are inherently human. Heck, they curse like my parents curse – so awesome. Yang certainly is one of the best storytellers in the film world.
So unless they properly subtitle this movie or your listening Chinese is impeccable, don’t watch the film. But if you can get your hands onto the restored one, for which I have great hopes, and happen to have 4 hours at hand, by all means watch this film.
So I guess I don’t even have to check and you’re talking about our version from the Monolith? Damn you, why did you get me so interested? XD
Hoho yeah, that’s the one. I’m sad that the version is so unwatchable, and I still am not sure if you’ll like the film. (Argh, 4 hours! And it’s no “Ai no Mukidashi”.) But then again, if you don’t, who will? XD I think it’s very similar to “Yi Yi” in pacing and even content, and it’s one of the few films I saw lately that I felt was “meaningful”.
I sat through Eureka and actually liked it. Longness™ does not scare me. Except when it’s not about movies. *hurr durr* Deal with it!
And stop making me even more interested! XD
HAHAHAHA. Amazing. I have to see Eureka too! Maybe I should start with “Paris, Texas”… anyways, I have to get into the mood to watch a film like that. And I just happened to be in the mood for “A Brighter Summer Day”.
Anyways, I will stop now! Hurr.
yes, this is a masterpiece! as is yi yi, and i think i would rank both of them as equal, now that i’ve rewatched yi yi again recently. i agree with J-Ro, who calls this the movie with the greatest novelistic richness of the 90s, at least I can’t think of another one (in that sense, yi yi also features what is probably the richest portrayal of a family in all of 00’s cinema). along with Les roseaux sauvages and They Live By Night, this is my favorite film about teenagers.
I was hoping you would comment on it! :D After all, you have mentioned the movie something like a million times before I finally watched it. It was pretty hard because the file was broken! (I blame my faulty hard drive.) So I had to devise a way to get to see the video file(s) in the DVD… but I made it @.@
Oh yeah, this movie is probably the closest a film can get to a novel (compared to everything else I have seen so far). I’m not so sure if I would call this “my favorite film about teenagers”. After all, teenagers probably go through the most interesting time of life, and it feels like there must be millions of good movies out there about it. Nothing comes to mind at the moment though! lol
@film: Same as Martin. You made me too interested to not ignore your “don’t watch this”. :P
@Martin: I love your overuse of ™. Do you actually have a special key combination for it? XXD
(I just tried it with unicode, but that doesn’t work with my keyboard. XD)
Hold ALT, then punch in 0153. (Though it apparently only works on the NumPad, not on the numbers above the letters.)
Deal™ with™ it™, bitchez™!™
I guess it is my forced attempt at being unique by using it in place of [sic]?
OMG I have no Numpad! O______o
(TM) is so much more self-affirming than [sic] XXXXD [sic] sounds like an embarrassed excuse whereas (TM) emphasizes the creativity which comes with the, uh, ‘creation’ of the word. Right? Ahem.
Yeah, because you’re on a Mac and your keyboard has a fuckton of symbols on alt+<numbers and letters> and alt+shift+<numbers and letters>.
™ on a German Mac layout is on alt+shift+d
Nyahahaha, I love your reasoning and I immediately absorb it as canon.
Hohoho! Very good.
It’s so much fun to make these XXXXD ™ ™ ™ ™ ™ ™ ™ ™ XXD And wow, there really are a lot of symbols… My favorite is this one XD
™™™™™™™™ If you leave out the speaces between the ™s, it looks meditative! XD
Vielen Dank jedenfalls and interesting that the comments section for an Edward Yang movie turned into a talk about ™. (Okay, that sentence was just another excuse for including some more ™s!)
(Speaking of spam: Spaces, not speaces.)
Yeah really, stop spamming the poor posting! XDXDXD
*meditate*