There is something inexplicably electric that runs through the intimidating three-hour duration of Yi Yi. Edward Yang’s epochal masterpiece, often hailed as one of the greatest films of the 21st century, is a film so tender, so dazzlingly original, so unspeakably romantic that when I watched it for the very first time it was hard for me to imagine having lived so long without ever having seen it. Film critic A.O. Scott, whose taste I immensely admire, watched the end credits with bleary eyes. I was surprised he could hold it together for so long; I was in pieces within the first hour.
Yi Yi is about an affluent family of four in Taipei. NJ (We Nien-jen) is the family patriarch, a reflective engineer working in the higher echelons of a tech firm. His wife Min-Min (Elaine Jin), is increasingly depressed because of her mother’s — who lives with them — comatose condition and leaves for a Buddhist retreat early on in the film. They have two children — a young and abundantly curious son Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang) who asks questions that would put a philosophy professor to shame and a mature, reserved, teenage daughter Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee) who attends a posh private school. There are other, minor characters too such as Min-Min’s dodgy albeit wealthy younger-brother A-Di whose passions include risky investments and infidelity, NJ’s ex-girlfriend Sherry, who is attractive in a melancholic sort of way and is arguably the most important character in the film and Ota, NJ’s Japanese colleague who is more of a sensualist than a capitalist and is the rare kind of man who believes in magic even at the wrong end of fifty.
I used the word minor in the previous sentence but I use it as a marker of screen-time not significance. For Yang is a rare filmmaker who cherishes his characters, even when they are indiscreet and even when they do vile, amoral things. Over the course of the film, these characters float through the textured world of Taipei, each grappling with their own foibles and regrets and temptations and place in that world. NJ struggles to convince his associates about fixing a deal with Ota; Ting-Ting straddles between keeping peace with her volatile neighbor cum best friend and the feelings she begins to acquire for her ex-boyfriend; and Yang-Yang, who tells NJ “I can't see what you see and you can't see what I see. So how can I know what you see?” moves around Taipei clicking pictures of the backs of people’s head, hoping he can show them what they can’t see. Is the fact that he and our filmmaker share their name a coincidence? Perhaps not. Yang-Yang stands in as Edward Yang’s purer, younger alter-ego. Someone whose dictionary does not contain words such as tragedy, brokenness and pain. Yet.
My favourite moments in the film always involve Ting-Ting and NJ. Kelly Lee and Wu Nien-jen bring a solemn austerity, dignity almost, to their performances that compound the naturalism Yang seems to be aiming for. The interactions, I am tempted to call them dates but they aren’t quite, between Ting-Ting and Fatty (her neighbor’s ex) will make the most devout, aromantic readers smile. They are both equally conscious and speak with a strange, reminiscent, paralyzing anxiety. This is until Fatty speaks about movies, his singular passion, and his face suddenly transforms as he claims: “Life is a mixture of sad and happy things. Movies are so lifelike, that’s why we love them… My uncle says we live three times as long since man invented movies.” Is he wrong? I hardly think so.
NJ’s time in Tokyo, where he goes for work and meets his ex-girlfriend Sherry, is a rare narrative achievement. The conversation that he and Sherry have about lost opportunities and broken promises and other alternatives even outdoes a Linklater script, with its infinite realism and infinite sadness. In the Jian family, no one appears to speak. They talk but Yang is the rare filmmaker who knows that oceans lie betwixt talking and speaking. The members of Jian family discuss the mundane, pointless details about their humdrum existence; speech for them is a vital agent to cross the bureaucracies of being. But it is only with Sherry, in some of the final sequences of the film that NJ speaks. Look at how he shakes his leg, constantly laughs and even allows himself bouts of vulnerability when he’s next to her. Perhaps that’s how love should look like, no?
There is a critique to be made that Mr. Yang has stripped Taiwan of its cultural, historical and political moorings. After all, the festival circuit that Yang’s films frequent (he won Best Director at Cannes for this film) is flooded with filmmakers striving to make authentic, hyperlocal films. I suppose one response would be that Mr. Yang is shooting a film at the cusp of globalization, about people who have the luxury of frequenting bagel stores and drinking at jazz bars. But I suspect Mr. Yang isn’t as concerned about globalization or the bourgeoisie as much as he is about positing that human condition is probably universal, or universal and therefore so utterly human and it doesn’t really matter whether we’re in Taipei or Tokyo or Delhi or London. Things start and things end and life is what happens in between.
What’s the proof you ask? The most brilliant scene in the film is a scene where the Jians are attending Min-Min’s reception at a posh five star. As NJ and Yang-Yang wait for the elevator, Sherry steps out. She and NJ have lost touch and NJ doesn’t know she’s back in Taiwan. They greet each other politely and she gives him her business card before leaving. As NJ continues waiting for another elevator, she comes rushing back and asks, with an impeccable sense of fury: “Why didn’t you come that day? I waited and waited. I’ve never got over it you know.” As the elevators come and go and Yang-Yang hovers between NJ and Sherry, there exists between them only something they’ve known. I was all of 22, inadequately jaded, when I first watched Yi Yi and I never really understood or thought about this specific scene. But now that I watched it again four years on, as things, relationships, in that rear view mirror, have compounded, this scene makes much too much sense. There’s an exquisite human tragedy at full display here, tragic because goodbyes will never stop sucking and human because we and only we know how much they suck.
Okay, haven’t seen it but, damn man, now I feel compelled. Movies are wonderful, terrible and everything in between. I want it all. Not necessarily in one film but I want them to move me to laughter or tears, thrill me but not predictably so or give me a visual experience that seems visceral like “the life of pi”, one of my favorite movies. I want to understand people in other cultures or times that I might not ever otherwise get to experience.
Thanks for sharing your insights on this.
Beautiful loved this piece
Tears in my eyes , beautiful
🥺😭❤️💌❤️💌✨