A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (Yang, 1991)
Criterion Collection, Blu-ray, Release Date Mar 22, 2016
Review by Christopher S. Long
The Taipei (capital city of Taiwan) of
director Edward Yang's film “A Brighter Summer Day” (1991), which
takes place from 1959-1961, is familiar to just about any viewer. The
teen protagonists are sick of being told what to do in school,
they're absolutely crazy about rock 'n roll, and the boys and girls
are growing increasingly crazy about each other. The parents,
meanwhile, obsess over their kids' grades and how to pay the bills,
while complaining about how young people today don't have any respect
like in the good old days.
However, these universal themes play
out in a specific time and place like no other. Yang, who just
happened to be a teenager in Taipei at the same time, recreates a
society built from pieces of so many others. The school is run by the
Kuomintang-backed military (President Chiang Kai-shek had a knack for
winning every election), the kids worship Elvis Presley and dress and
snarl like rebellious Hollywood youths, and a Japanese samurai
sword crops up in multiple scenes before playing a decisive role in
the action. All of which makes sense for a country occupied by the
Japanese for half a century, then ruled after the war by the Republic
of China (not to be confused with the mainland People's Republic of
China, or with the People's Front of Judea) which was, in turn,
officially recognized by the United States government.
This hybrid condition is further
underscored by the simple yet brilliant static shot of a tree-lined
road that plays under the opening credits: in just over a minute,
this quiet road is traveled by pedestrians, a horse-drawn cart,
bicyclists, and motor cars, antiquity and modernity sharing lanes.
Combine the uncertainty of a nation in transition and the eternal
turbulence of adolescence and you have the combustible mix that leads
to tragedy in Yang's somber, sympathetic epic.
The Zhang family tries its best to
negotiate this perilous landscape, but a father (Chang Kuo-chu)
unsure of his status as a minor government functionary and a mother
(Elaine Jin) prone to asthma attacks can only offer so much help.
Younger son Xiao Si'r (Chang Chen) is thus largely on his own as he
tries to get by at a school he views with increasing contempt while
also coping with an afterschool life dominated by two warring teen
gangs, neither of which he is inclined to join. There may be reasons
aplenty for his aloofness but don't look too deep; it's just in his
DNA to be a loner. Trust me, I recognize the type.
Si'r has a lot of free time to fill and
does so by hanging out with his friends, including the younger,
scrappy Cat (Wong Chi-zan) who sings Elvis tunes in a phoneticized
falsetto that produces the film's most memorable sound, as well as
the movie's title, a slightly misheard Elvis lyric. Si'r also falls
in love with Ming (Lisa Yang), a tenuous relationship that provides
the source of many of his struggles as various boys consider her to
be their property with Si'r identified as the intruder who must be
“handled” with the might they have been taught is right by their
authoritarian instructors, both at home and in school.
Still, the teen gangs seem innocuous
enough at first, filled with young men strutting and preening to
impress each other and, of course, girls, but petty territorial
squabbles eventually turn bloody. Not just for the kids either. The
father's insecurities prove well-founded when one day, out of the
blue, the secret police come calling at his door and whisk him away
from his family for days of relentless interrogation that is all the
more violent for its bloodlessness. He is badgered day and night to
confess everything in writing, and by “everything” his
interlocutor truly means everything in his life and he is berated
for every alleged omission no matter how minor.
Our nuclear family is under pressure
from so many fronts it cannot help but decay. Pressures are exerted
from within as well. The father and son clash over school evolves in
multiple stages, while mother's chronic illness prompts her to remind
her oldest daughter to “Hurry and grow up. My future depends on
you.” But other than that, have a good time. It's no wonder the
power keeps going out in this movie's Taipei; the wonder is that it
somehow keeps coming back on.
Yang (who co-scripted with three other
writers) often lets the action unfold at a leisurely pace in long
shots, some with careful pans that explore restrictive spaces, others
careful static compositions. In one of the key action sequences, a
brutal assault by undetermined assailants takes place in near-dark
settings, both its cause and its aftermath remaining unclear. Yet
even though the story can sometimes be a bit challenging to follow,
even at just under four hours “A Brighter Summer Day” still feels
like it consists of nothing but the essential, rendering the
heartbreaking finale both shocking and inevitable.
“A Brighter Summer Day” went
largely undistributed for many years, even being shut out of most
major festivals at the time. Critics who saw it at select venues
championed the cause (like many people, I first learned about it from
the great Jonathan Rosenbaum's passionate advocacy), resulting in its
unusual status as a film hailed as one of the triumphs of '90s cinema
while remaining largely unseen by most cinephiles. Its relative lack
of availability was even more keenly felt when Edward Yang died in
2007 at the age of 59. Criterion's fabulous Blu-ray release is in the
final step in correcting one of the great cinematic injustices of the
past quarter century.
Video:
The film is presented in its original
1.85:1 aspect ratio. From the Criterion booklet: “This new 4K
digital restoration, undertaken in partnership with The Film
Foundation's World Cinema Project, was created from the 35 mm
original camera negative on an ARRISCAN film scanner with wet-gate
processing.”
Any quality transfer would be hailed as
a gift considering the film has largely been available in North
America only through mediocre bootlegs and downloads. However, by any
standard, this restored high-def transfer is tremendous, with a rich,
warm color palette and sharp image resolution throughout. If any
boosting was required, it's subtle enough not to be noticeable, and I
couldn't see any obvious signs of dirt, debris, or damage of any
kind. Plenty of detail visible in the darker shots as well.
Basically, this transfer is a knockout.
Audio:
The linear PCM mono track isn't called
for much dynamism. It's clear, functional and completely free of any
hiss or distortion.
Extras:
Since the film runs close to four
hours, it fills up Disc One, the extra on the disc being a commentary
track by critic Tony Rayns. I haven't had a chance to sample the
commentary yet (watching a four-hour movie plus other extras takes up
a bit of time) but Rayns is one of the finest English-language
writers on Asian cinema so I look forward to checking it out in the
near future.
Disc Two kicks off with the
feature-length documentary “Our Time, Our Story” (2002, 113 min.)
which covers twenty years of New Taiwan Cinema. I was really looking
forward to learning more about the movement that produced great
directors like Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Ang Lee, Tsai Ming-liang
and others, some of my favorite contemporary filmmakers. I was
disappointed by a documentary I found difficult to follow which
doesn't mean it's bad. Rather, it's clearly made for Taiwanese
audiences or other viewers who are familiar with the many political,
historical and cultural references mentioned but often not explained
in the film. I'm sure there's plenty of meat here, but I gave up
after about 45 minutes when I realized I didn't know any more about
New Taiwan Cinema than when I started the movie. Maybe I'll try
again.
The disc also includes a new interview
(2014, 19 min.) with lead actor Chang Chen who went on to great
success after “A Brighter Summer Day” with roles in “Happy
Together” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” among others. He
tells of first meeting Yang through his father, who was an actor and
friend of Yang's. This features also lets us see some of Yang's
wonderful caricatures and sketches which he would use to help the
actors create characters.
The final extra on Disc Two is “Likely
Consequences” a 45 minute video of a play co-written and directed
by Yang and performed in Taipei in 1992. The quality isn't so great
and I can't say I found it riveting, but for hardcore Yang fans,
well, it's there.
The slim fold-out insert booklet
includes a new essay by critic Godfrey Cheshire and a June 1991
Director's Note by Edward Yang.
Final Thoughts:
Ah, the wonder of Blu-ray. “A
Brighter Summer Day” has rested atop the list of shamefully
unavailable films for a few decades. Now it not only gets crossed off
the list but can be seen with a tremendous high-def restoration and
with ample extras on a two-disc release that will go down as one of
the major film events of the year. I probably prefer Yang's magnificent "Yi Yi" (2000), one of my favorite films of the past twenty years or so, but "A Brighter Summer Day" is wonderful too. And now they're both available from Criterion.
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