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A brighter summer day

Teresa chides me for photos of people's backs. She wants to see their front. But I'm not like Jonathan Chang's character inYi Yi. I'm just uncertain about putting a camera in front of people I don't know.

I remember not enjoying Yi Yi, but I'm not sure why. A few years ago, I went to see an earlier Edward Yang film at MoMA, the four-hour A Brighter Summer Day. I had asked some friends if there were interested; Cherry was interested but had to work, Eric said he was. We met at the theater, stepping from a bright New York afternoon into the basement of the museum. The audience was small. We found our seats and settled in.

The film was incredible. After seeing it I wrote the following:

It's a film about the tensions inherent in Taiwanese society in the 60s, after the Nationalists had come to the island, the memory of the Japanese occupation still fresh in people's minds. The film follows a good student as he tries to navigate his world surrounded by street gangs. His parents are good people, but struggling to raise their children; their difficulties are compounded by the uncertainty of their own future, having emigrated from the mainland. Yang based some of the film on his own experiences, having been born in Shanghai and brought up in Taipei, and also on the true story of the first juvenille homocide case in Taiwain. It's an epic film, unspooling at just under four hours, and a depressing one that trains its eye on the complex social issues of that particularly transitional time in Taiwan's history.

Afterwards, I didn't know what to say; there was too much to digest. We wandered around midtown and ate menchanko at an east side Japanese restaurant.

A few years later, I met Edward Yang. A Kit's short film had made it into competition at the Cannes film festival, and she invited me to come along. Yang was the head of the jury reviewing the shorts in competition, and we met him at a few of the many parties that fill the evenings there. He was a tall man with a ready smile. I don't remember any of the very brief conversations we had.

A few weeks ago, Kit sent me an email telling me Edward Yang had died. I was shocked and surprised. He was so bright when I met him; I couldn't imagine that he had passed. In the days that followed more filmmakers would pass with greater recognition garnering larger rememberances. And while I admire them and their work, none of their films have struck me quite the way that A Brighter Summer Day did. I need to spend more time with Edward Yang.