All of Yang’s films from the Nineties onward are panoramic and polyphonic, designed to contain multitudes. What makes A Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi twin miracles in his body of work is not only their ambition but also their impeccable construction—a quality that sets them apart from powerful but stylistically strained works like The Terrorizers and A Confucian Confusion. Where the ideas and characters in his lesser films can sometimes feel merely chaotic, A Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi create an almost musical interplay between emptiness and abundance. The most obvious example is the arrangement of so many vibrant personalities and dramatic incidents around a central figure who would rather not act or speak. For Yang, though, Xiao Si’r and NJ’s speechlessness doesn’t turn them into clean slates upon which the problems of society are projected. Instead, their silence gives an almost tangible weight to language, and reminds us of the constant difficulty of choosing one’s words and actions in a world of arbitrary laws and outcomes.
A Brighter Summer Day | Reverse Shot
Posted 6 months ago
