I need this film in my life!

I'll be the devil's advocate and I actually agree with many of Kriege's points.

I'll get some stuff out of the way first. I'm Chinese (Hong Kong) and don't appreciate hearing one of the "Asian Tigers" to be referred to as a third-world country - and such terminology is definitely outdated, and I'm sure Political Science PhDs will have a field day mocking this term. Taiwan is developed and industrialized by now, and I have quite a few close Taiwanese friends. I think culturally Taiwanese filmmakers are still learning to refine their artistic expression - culturally, they are developing, I'll concede that. There isn't a great tradition of excellent filmmaking compared to Italy, for example, from which Taiwanese (or any other country with "developing" cinema) can draw from. Edward Yang films were actually box office poison in Taiwan; Taiwanese audiences couldn't relate to his films, leading to Yang's bitterness towards his own country.

This is something I really agree with Kriege, and I think it's an awfully important point that will influence of the quality of cinema. I do agree that the arthouse intelligentsia crowds espouse a bourgeois, patronizing embrace of auteur wannabe films from countries they consider exotic or are in the beginning stages of filmmaking. There is a tendency to overlook flaws of a work because of sentimentality - "Poor third-world movies trying to make a socio-political statement." Therefore, some of these films are considered great because of guilt-ridden bourgeois attitudes that apologize for bad films simply because they are from countries that are perceived to suffer from poverty, wars, upheavals of development, lack of education, which leads to a lack of artistic sophistication. Some critics don't concede that a work is lame out of fear of being branded as unsympathetic towards the plight of the less unfortunate. In actuality they are covering up their bourgeois guilt by praising a weak work and hence perpetuating bad standards of filmmaking!

Edward Yang's intention behind the film was wonderful and ambitious. He aimed to make an epic of Taiwanese history through the allegory of conflicted youths, an admirable and worthy attempt but IMO a failure as a film itself nonetheless. The desire to express very complex ideas, history, insight, etc. is a wonderful thing to have as a filmmaker, but intention does not equate good filmmaking.

There are not too many directors who have successfully dramatized their epic visions through cinema and still make their films an engrossing experience. Excellent epics are extremely hard to make because of their ambitious intentions, which require the exceptional marriage of technical and artistic skills. I think Tarkovsky, Kubrick, and Lean have mastered the epic - but how? I really wish I knew but I do have some ideas, as this is something I've pondered for many years. There are films which have successfully expressed their philosophical messages, but they failed to engage and entertain an audience. Then there are those films that fail to convey their intentions successfully (due to a lack of aesthetic mastery, taste, vision, use of the cinematic language, etc) and also fail to entertain the audience. Unfortunately, I think A Brighter Summer Day is the latter.

To make an enjoyable film requires an understanding of cinematic language. Leone, for example, is an excellent director who understands cinematic language and knew how to heighten dramatic events with his mastery of the camera; his screenwriter Vicenzoni claims that Leone's films (the Italian Westerns mostly) have been attributed depth by critics when there was none; such substance was assumed by critics only because Leone's filmmaking skills were so outstanding that they led critics to think his films had substance. I agree with this insight - Leone was no philosopher and didn't have a terribly sophisticated message in his many of his films. But he sure was a director who understood rhythm, pacing, composition, drama, tension, suspense, and he knew how to weave the elements of filmmaking (editing, astonishing cinematography, soundtrack, etc). In short, he knew how to tell a story well by showing and emphasizing what is significant.

I have to say this: Edward Yang (sorry, Edward, RIP) has competent filmmaking techniques but doesn't have the sense on how to touch an audience. Perhaps it's his personality. His style is a cold, fatalistic detachment conveyed by excruciating static long takes, almost a reluctance to tell a story - which is the point of cinema IMO. His messages are not effectively expressed and thus fail to reach an audience. For example, his style of rhythm, pacing, and innovative cinematography (lack of interesting multiple angles to be precise) is painful. The only way to really reach out to an audience is to captivate them by the use of suspense and giving enough effective visuals to make an audience care about what and who they are watching.

Edward Yang just doesn't seem to care about telling stories in an engaging manner. He forcefeeds the audience his views with questionable cinematic techniques without even trying to convince an audience by at least being a bit more entertaining and watchable. For example, I've seen Lawrence of Arabia and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly countless times, and I still never get tired of them. To me this is the essence of legendary filmmaking - to be able to watch them over and over again and still experience something different every time. When I say Edward Yang films should be more entertaining, I don't mean that he should have resorted to infantile Hollywood elements (explosions, saccharine happy endings, lush production values, etc). I do mean that if he wanted to convey suffering, his view of life, political statements, or anything, he would have had to evoke the audience's emotions and curiosity. Lean and Leone, for example, have done so through breathtaking cinematography, a new way at looking the familiar. Yang makes the familiar feel boring.

Edward Yang has only managed to tell his Director of Photography to use pedestrian compositions to tell a story and to tell it without dramatic emphasis and emotional impact. There is almost a contempt towards the audience, as though they should accept his vision while being bored to death. In the movie there are so many potentially dramatic and emotionally evocative scenes that are shown through wide or full shots while they camera remains static. We don't get to see faces. We hear voices but we don't hear their tone. We see objects but we don't see the human attachment. We see people interacting with each other but from a detached angle - "across the street through a telescope" (sorry, geeky Mystery Science Theater 3000 reference here). Scenes of violence are given no emphasis. Some may applaud Yang for treating deaths as ordinary scenes with no fanfare and the usual wailing. If violent scenes are presented so ordinarily, then why do they affect the plot and the meaning of the film so much? In Taipei Story this approach towards death at first impressed me, but after seeing this again, it is just fatalism in uncaring universe that makes the audience grow numb instead of giving them a cathartic experience. Some may argue this is a breakthrough style which forces the audience to imagine what is going on. Tell me, how can the audience care to imagine anything when the director doesn't convince them to care in the first place?