![]() ![]() Next door to the school is a film studio shooting a Chinese costume drama. That a violent teen chooses that most American of sporting gear, a baseball bat, to beat the snot out of someone surely means something in this context, but Yang isn’t going to bash you over the head with it. Yang’s graceful, naturalistic way of inserting politically fraught signifiers into his characters’ hands could teach other film-makers a thing or two. The local people play Japanese music, to the consternation of their neighbors from the mainland, though the kids, just by anti-communist inertia, become increasingly obsessed with rock’n’roll. Tanks occasionally roll down docile neighborhood streets with little discussion about where they are coming from or where they are headed. The “unknown little island”, as a character refers to their home, is doing the double duty of absorbing the new population and finding its feet as a political hot potato. The year is 1960, and the families that fled Mao Zedong in 1949 are now past the point of pretending that they are ever headed back to the mainland. To frame this as the Taiwanese Rebel Without a Cause is hardly a stretch. Despite the four hours, there will be no intermission at BAM it’s how Yang, who died in 2007, wanted it, and today’s binge-watching audiences ought to take to it nicely.Īt the center of A Brighter Summer Day is S’ir (Chang Chen), a kid from a good home finding himself increasingly mixed up with the wrong crowd. ![]() While lengthy, the picture moves at a remarkable rate, unspooling a plot that involves a broad cast of characters, many of whom have their own evolving storylines. It has never had a general American release.Įdward Yang is best known for his rich 2000 multigenerational melodrama Yi Yi: a One and a Two, and one can find some similarities between it and this earlier, massive film. That ends now, however, with the four-day run at Brooklyn’s BAMcinématek of a new 4K restoration followed by a highly anticipated Blu-ray and DVD release via the Criterion Collection. Though since its debut on the film festival scene in 1991 it’s been a difficult title to find, at least in the United States. If you see a single four-hour film about the transitional generation of Chinese refugees born in Taiwan after the Communist takeover, make it Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day. ![]()
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