A Brighter Summer Day was for some time one of those titles that I was maybe vaguely aware of in my 20s but only grew to understand was considered in the Super Advanced Level of Film Buffery (or do I call it the Cineastistas? Who knows) a major landmark film, and a film that is about so much in four hours while being mostly about the lives of normal people trying to live - and uh, you know, would-be or actual teen gangs - between 1959 and 1961 in Taipei in Taiwan.
I've eeen Yi Yi and loved it, so this didn't seem like much of a stretch to take in next. Finally watching it, Id say it is... Good. Really good. There are times it's splendid and even mesmerizing in how Yang elevates the everyday and understated into something close to poetry. And the final twenty to thirty minutes, when it's leading up to and that big incident occurs, it almost feels as though it *should* be greater than it is.
Here's why I think I find myself somewhat at a remove from it, at least on a first go-around: Yang shoots much of this, or at least 40% or so of it, at a remove with characters often far away in the shots or at the least Id wager with long lenses, and while he does also in that other 60% go in tighter on people (for example that interrogation with the Father in the second half), he also is a fan of shrouding characters in darkness in certain major set pieces (ie the gangfights/brawls, one of which with a particularly important weapon), and sometimes that point does work to be evocative of this mysterious connection or lack thereof between teens of opposite sexes (there's a lovely scene of a conversation where the boy and girl are in silhouette and she is walking back and forth on a beam, and it's as though her voice is coming from everywhere). He shoots plainly, simply, often in long takes, sometimes deliberately with a character talking to another off screen.
In other words, this movie is entertaining... But it's also, for lack of a better word, work. This isn't to take away from anyone who immediately connects to this dedicatedly stripped down approach to storytelling. And this approach pays off in particular in the second half (you know, two hours of this four hour epic) as the lives of this family and this boy Si'r are becoming more ensconced in drama they can or cannot control, and when deep wells of emotion do bubble up and roil over.
And most of all what makes much of this so different and (in a good way) unique among epic films of this length and scope is that the main character isnt, until near the end, some dark or brooding character, but a good person who is trying to figure out who he is in relation to the world, that being among these teen roughs like Ma and Honey (the latter being maybe the most memorable character in the film), and he is going through a slow but sure coming of age in this city, and looking back (more intellectually than emotionally) I admire how Yang ties Si'r and his feelings of uncertainty and reticence and trying to be one thing and falling into the demise of his own self into Taiwan at the time itself. It's more when I read other reviews that bring this up, that the film on the whole is like a giant metaphor for the death of a nation in the shade of another one (all being exiles and immigrants from China due to... All what happened there and all), and this eventual crime being so inexplicable and yet maybe it could have or should have been seen coming?
I think that it isn't fair to call some of this dull, I know that. But there is a fine line to walk when having understated and naturalistic dramatic scene after understated and naturalistic dramatic scene, and it being *this* long. If it were even two and a half hours it might be in my estimation astonishing. On the other hand, I also have to admit taking the scissors to the movie as is would take some of the heart out of it (for example, the stuff with the Mom who has Asthma, does that need to be there? It does matter as part of the dramatic fabric of the family, so maybe?)
In a film like this, dramatic or just memorable set pieces really do help to break up the flow of things, and Yang is absolutely not a filmmaker all about that; he does get to them, at least by the time we get to concert scenes and those gang fights, but they aren't his primary focus. At the same time, there just.... Wasn't the level of pathos that clicked for me with the dynamics of these characters.
I fully admit that this could change one day if I have another full day to kick my feet up and dig in to this massive but subtle full course meal of cinema. I also always say I prefer a (in his/her element) filmmaker to do more than less. Do I even feel guilty about giving it four stars? I definitely found much to be taken with here, and Chen's performance is kind of incredible as a kid who is more like a lot of us watching: unsure, decent, and, if put into the wrong path, capable of doing bad things. It works as an empathetic story. It's just.... So much of it?
