Edward Yang: Yi Yi

Edward Yang's Yi Yi: Showing People What They Do Not Know
(Taiwan, 2000)

Edward Yang's Yi Yi is, in my opinion, one of the few real cinamatic masterpieces of the new millennia.

Yang passed away at the end of June 2007, and his creative presence will be very much missed. Though it's an unfortunate coincidence, one major quality of this film is it's autumnal feel, which unifies an elaborate narrative of Chekhovian richness. Throughout the length of this very captivating film, varied characters engage in backward glances through their lives - which primarily takes the form of self-interrogations of regrets and missed opportunities, and the consequences of ill-informed actions, leading up to a certain resignation and forgiveness. This is perhaps most dramatic in the extremely varied and finely nuanced male characters - nearly all of whom (most dramatically patriarch N.J., sliding into a slow-motion, midlife crisis) are essentially poets or philosophers forced by circumstance into more ordinary types of lives which they may or may not find entirely satisfying, and are now beginning to have second thoughts about.

This is the departure point for the narrative of Yi Yi - as this process of self-interrogation develops, how does one reconcile the momentum inherent in ones' path through life with the contradictory tug of instincts that may be pulling you in a different direction? The success, or lack of success, in negiotiating this crisis of identity is the source of nearly all dramatic tension here, and making this intimate, transformative evolution into something vibrant and visual is a daunting idea. Nonetheless, Yang succeeds in stunning fashion, leaving us with a deeply soulful and insightful film. As the narrative unfolds, one will discover two great, pivotal exceptions to the self-analysis undertaken by the many characters present here - N.J.'s magical Japanese dot.com colleague Ota, and his phenomenally precocious 8-year-old son, Yang-Yang; both are intuitive visionaries who've managed to make such instincts work for them in beautiful fashion, and both serve as points of clarity, upon a horizon, which others must move towards.

Structured by ritual, the film begins with a dire wedding and ends with a transcendant funeral, and it feels like a discreet glimpse into something much more expansive - this tightly woven, overlapping narrative combines a humanism and character detail evocative of Satyajit Ray with the kind of tightly choreographed sprawl one would associate with Robert Altman or Jean Renoir; a large number of the scenes that Yang constructs pose intricate questions, leading to a gradual upward modulation in emotional intensity towards the end of the film. Yang - wisely I feel - selected several non-actors for major roles here (other filmmakers or writers mostly); the entire cast has a deep and intuitive grasp of the material, and performances throughout are memorably natural. Yang has a penchant for incorporating incidental scene material as symbolic elements - shooting through windows and against mirrors, and using reflections to undescore emotional points within, and this is breathtaking at several points (watch for the heartbeat in one extraordinary, mostly non-verbal scene). The combination of such a strong sense of visual improvisation within a rather intricate and literary narrative is unusual and quite powerful.

Through it all N.J., the memorable Ota, and Yang-Yang stand as the key characters, with Yang-Yang - who combines a child's directness with an intuitive soulfulness that manages to seem both philosophically ageless and cinematically spontaneous - giving voice to the emotional center of what assorted other characters in this film fumble towards and stumble around (and what Edward Yang, with far more virtuosity, also sought to do): "When I grow up, I want to tell things people don't know, show them stuff they haven't seen."

This great, rich film accomplishes this in glorious fashion.