Film: A Brighter Summer Day

Lat weekend I saw a few films at the New Zealand International Film Festival in Auckland. These included the sweet Lebanese film Caramel - with an unexpected lesbian sub-plot - directed by Nadine Labaki, and the Irish The Escapist, a solid, well-acted and funny, if a little predictable, escape-from-prison movie, directed by Ruper Wyatt. I didn't quite get if Joseph Fiennes's taken on Meloni's Keller in "Oz" was serious or ironic, but it was entertaining, as long as it lasted.

However, the masterpiece - and I'm not using the word lightly - was a A Brighter Summer Day (1991), by Taiwanese film-maker Edward Yang. It was almot 4-hour long and not one second too many.



Visually, it's one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen: minimal camera work, yet each scene is framed and planned to the last detail, with the actors's blocking and dialogue providing all the movement necessary for this family epic set in the early 1960s amongst the Taiwanese middle-classes who had left China after the Communist takeover.

I know very little about that period of history, and especially about the Nationalist perspective (I grew up in a context that made and still makes me synpathise with the Maoist side, however flawed). But this film gave me a full sense of the loss, the identity crisis experienced by the expatriates during the Taiwan exile. The militaristic, pro-American regime pervades their lives and is constantly present on the screen, bringing a stifling sense of oppression which the dream of wealth, consummerism and American popular culture (symbolysed by Elvis Presley's songs) can never quite fulfill.

It's a haunting drama about history, family, national identity, gender roles, modernity vs. tradition, the hope and desperation of being young and then adults almost against our will. All told through a complex tapestry of characters we grow to care about, regardless of their many flaws, their weaknesses and even their darkest sides.

Catch this film if you can. It's one of those rare works that grabs both your mind and your heart, and challenges you on both accounts.