Latest / Outskirts Film Podcast / #011 - Edward Yang's Confucian Confusions

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#011 - Edward Yang's Confucian Confusions · Outskirts Film Podcast

• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Outskirts Film Podcast.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Christopher Small, and today I'm joined by Hello, my Moku, and my voice sounds terrible.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_07: I'm sorry.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_06: Hi, I'm Alonso.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if my voice sounds terrible or not, but it's just as usual.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Today we are talking about a very different kind of filmmaker to usual.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Edward Yang is one of those filmmakers whose career feels inseparable from the city that all seven of his future films are set in, which is Taipei.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: In Yang's films, the city is a kind of shifting, mysterious, living moral landscape that's not just a backdrop, but really a kind of at the heart of these films.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Edward Yang, born in Shanghai, raised in Taiwan once the uh nationalists were defeated and went to the island.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, he trained as an engineer, an electrical engineer, I think, in the United States, and was about to pursue a career in engineering when he started to go and see films, and in particular saw uh Werner Herzog's Agira The Wrath of God, which around the age of 30 kind of catalyzed a return back to cinema and to the idea that movies could be a personal um artistic expression of some kind.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: And from there, Edward Yang became one of the defining voices of Taiwanese new cinema, alongside, of course, his friend Ho Shao Chen and colleague, and actor in his films, made movies that I would say pretty much all are concerned with the transition of this traditional Taiwanese society into something else.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Apartments, offices, city streets, casinos, family dinners, TJ Fridays, and hard rock cafes, these are the stuff of Edward Yang's films.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yang's final film, Yi Yee, was kind of a summation of his work and well loved for that.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yet when he died some years later, tragically at a young age of uh bowel cancer, he had been at work on a project with uh Jackie Chan, of all people.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, an animated film kind of derived from his lifelong love of manga that kind of promised a second career of Edward Young films that we never got to see, unfortunately.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, as you can tell, we've pivoted a little bit this week towards respectability.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: I promise that we will return back to the gutter where we belong.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Finally, I think speaking about someone who's a pretty much unqualified Cinephile hero.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm teeing up for very specific kind of conversation here.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I would like to just begin by asking you both, uh Alonso and Oiko, maybe to share a starting point for talking about Edward Yang's films.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_06: Just to give some context, uh Chris has often mentioned that some like big uh name filmmakers have been like blank sports for his cinophilia.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_06: That has was my case with Edward Yang until recently.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_06: And last year, actually at the ACA in London, I had in theory what will be the perfect entry point to Edward Yang was like a 35mm like screen of uh terrorizers.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_06: Since I always knew of this like name, I thought, okay, so he's like very much so like ingrained in the canon.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_06: I'll eventually like get to his work and my reaction uh was uh kind of like let me be cold.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_06: Instead of talking specifically about why you let me specifically that film very cold.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_06: Now that I've seen some of these other films, you just have this like general idea of like why the like the formal mannerisms of so easily embraced by what's just in Italy.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_06: Whereas I feel that's not necessarily the case with the other like even the other filmmakers from this era, and particularly like all his films seems to like exist and be like like heavily like defended as like no every single film he did was kind of this like uh like sweeping master masterpiece, which always very interesting because even like with someone with like like uh Hao Shang as we were mentioning, I don't feel like he has like his whole like body work doesn't have like the same kind of devotion, which to me kind of like presents kind of an interesting dynamic of to think about of like why does the forms in which like Eljang worked throughout most of his career uh kind of like cater toward this idea of like he was immediately canonized.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_06: I think he like Gigi was like in the 2012 like seven sound uh poll, it was immediately like like I don't know which significant place in the head, but it was like seeing how it was like immediately embraced in instead of like having this perhaps more like slow like process of being like discussed and like thought about it's still very interesting to me in a way.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_06: I don't know if you have like any thoughts regarding that specifically.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_07: It's it's interesting because in my experience, the way a film is embraced as a like a personal experience, right?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_07: Like we we as a as cinophiles, I think, should love films just as films, not necessarily because they become canonical works.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_07: But I think especially in Yang's case or in many filmmakers, people tend to like uh look at them or like uh explore or appreciate them because they're part of the canon, or they at least like feel the pressure of appreciating, or like it's it's it becomes like a yeah, uh pressure in a way.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_07: But to me, I think the way I approach these the canonical films, especially Yi, it was this resistance because I I it's it's it hasn't been like one year since I've uh I've seen Yi.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_07: And that from that experience, I don't remember having that uh long-lasting impressions, but that's okay.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_07: Whereas, for instance, with Mahjong and confusion confusion, um I enjoyed them more because I I think when there is imperfections, there are like some space that you can inhabit and you you can question.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_07: Whereas I think if a film is too perfect, it's often uh a difficult encounter.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_07: You just like if you get flooded by images, and then you start to, and maybe in a second viewing or a third viewing even, to say, okay, now I'm gonna just see what's in there.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_07: I'm I mean that's how I feel about Yang mostly, I guess.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think Yang is also always spoken about in this kind of hyperformalist terms, and he and he always was in the history of my Cinophilia.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: I too have got this sense of his body of work as a kind of monolith, which it's not once you start to really you know chip away at it, especially I think Confucian Confusion and Mahjong are these two kind of wild cards in there.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: There was always this sense that he was he that he was talked about in those odd, formalist, modernist terms.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think it can be difficult then, you know, when faced by that to find those exactly as you were saying, Uko, those like imperfections, those those readings of the films that are a bit more open-ended.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because I actually terrorizers was also my first Yang, and I also had a somewhat similar reaction, maybe a little more positive than you.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: It has taken me some time to you know find my way into Yang as a result.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Also, it's interesting that you mentioned Hu Xiao Shen because of course they were colleagues and friends, and and Hu Xiao Shen mortgaged his house to get Taipei story made, which is an incredible anecdote.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: When you talk about Edward Yang's biography, he very much started to make films in Taiwan, I think, in a moment that was kind of in contrast to something that came before.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting for this podcast because usually that what came before is the stuff that we talk about, which is the kind of commercial trash.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: So he he he was faced with this, you know, what he saw as kind of just a sea of garbage, kind of commercial Taiwanese films, and then was part of a movement that was trying to make very different kinds of films.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look at Hu Xiao-shen, by contrast, you know, who started a few years earlier uh than Edward Yang.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: And Hu Xiao Shen's first films are really unlike his later work, at least superficially, of course, you can dig into that.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, uh films like Cute Girl, Play While You Play, uh The Green Green Grass of Home.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it took him a few films to, you know, those films are just kind of like these like broad comedies in a way.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: But with Edward Yang, I mean, unfortunately, I haven't seen this TV, two-part TV film he made, sometimes called Floating Weed, sometimes called Duckweed, nor have I seen In Our Time, which is the kind of anthology film that got him started.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, pretty much all the young films after that have like this perfect quality in some way.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_06: I remember when I was like uh in my shameful like Tumblr early Cinephile era.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_07: Terrorizers is the perfect tumbler for the game.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_06: Terrorizers, GG, advisor when they like they they kind of like carry this kind of like uh every frame of painting kind of weight about them of like uh one perfect shotism.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_06: Because it's interesting, and particularly as uh Chris was saying with uh Ho Shush James, I think like Summer's grandpas and like even like this like transitional period has kind of this like I don't know like lighter like uh ambience around it, like it feels like more free-flowing, and then as like you go like to that day on the beach, which is like the first Edward Jang film, it feels immediately as this kind of like I guess in a way has kind of become you know kind of like the Cinefal's favorite, like the Dark Horse Peak of like, you know, actually this is the Edward Jang film that uh everyone should see.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_06: And just like from the get-go, his like first feature lane is already oh straight out.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_06: You have like the long takes, you have like the one perfect perfect shot isms, you have like this kind of like central melodrama, but still kind of like this like detachment in how it's like presented.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_06: You can all already see like from this first film, kind of this like which I don't know if was like a conscious decision or attempt of him what what he was going for as a filmmaker, had perhaps this taste towards like the great European masters, but yeah, particularly in this like early 80s uh period, which is something we can start talking about.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_06: I feel those are the films uh I feel like kind of like still too indebted to some perhaps idea of like quality.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_06: I don't really care that much about.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_07: There's a difficulty in the way in which we try to approach Edward Yang, as you say, there isn't a like a lengthy uh filmography to comment on the the evolution of a style, right?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_07: Like it starts stops at yi yee.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_07: And when you think of it, like to to say that okay, in the early uh 80s that there's a like a more concern with the quality than in the 90s, but then you have like that day on the on the beach is quite similar in the for in the aesthetics and the form with yi.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_07: But then in the in between you have confusion, confusion when mahjong mayong.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_07: Then there's this I don't want to say inconsistencies, but it's just like a different way of as if it's like a circle.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_07: He's like he's he goes he goes back to his early concerns and early themes that he already explored before.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_07: So it's like I mean, that day on the beach to me prefigures uh brighter summer day and yeah.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_06: Like our bright summer day kind of like jumps out of the page because I felt like very big like aesthetic change in that film, which we can get more into it like later, but to me it's more like about how it becomes kind of like an emergent fable, like through like I guess like the length also helps in that way, but it felt like less orchestrated to me, in how despite being clearly like very much like a masterwork, just the way like how like scenes float and how like he has like space to these kind of like dramatic moments to like evolve in real time, whereas in his previous AV spirit, I feel like every dramatic moment it has kind of like this like rhetoric weight, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just like perhaps to me feels a bit loaded like symbolically at times, which I think Gigi actually, as you were saying, Gigi goes back to those mannerisms a little bit, which is also the reason I don't I'm not the biggest GG fan.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_06: Uh but uh in a ride summer day and uh a confusion confusion, which like actually uh spoiler is my favorite film, I think.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_06: It only makes me think about like Mahjong in a way because that as the one I haven't seen, and it is kind of this missing piece, which uh uh doesn't let me like conclude my my uh hypothesis of like this trajectory.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I think on the Doris Witchman episode I kind of outed myself accidentally as someone who sometimes watches um films with commentaries.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: I watched uh E twice because I was writing about it uh last week, and the first time I watched it, I watched it just like that, and the second time I watched it uh listening to the audio commentary while I was cooking, and this audio commentary was Edward Yang uh speaking.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: It was the first time I've ever heard him speaking, being interviewed by Tony Rains.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: What is very interesting to me was to hear Yang's commentary, frankly.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: He really was kind of like a narrative craftsman.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, is how I would characterize what he was saying, you know.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: He he never seemed to really go for anything, you know, with too freighted with too much meaning or digging into things like that.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was always like very practical observations about the film, you know.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: This is how I did this, this is how I coaxed this out of this kid.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes Tony Reigns is kind of teasing him to talk about, you know, a particularly bravura long take or something like that.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And Yang is just like, well, you know, just see what was right for the moment, you know.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't have any kind of like deeper philosophical reason for that.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, you know, you need to see her face, then you need to see his face, and there needs to be a flow, so that's why I did it.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, wow, okay.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that that really helped me to, you know, to think of this how this guy was doing stuff.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I did come to the Confucian, Confusion and Mahjong, which as we said, these two sort of they're kind of the only ones in this body of work that offer some of the kind of diffuseness and it's bordering on messiness that I think we're drawn to.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: So when I came to those, I could see how, you know, this guy was, you know, for whatever material, whether it's like the sort of weird capitalist romantic comedy of uh Confucian Confusion or this kind of transnational whatever of Mahjong.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like he he's that that same vocabulary is there, you know, and I I that really helped me appreciate that he's not, you know, this kind of um formalist for formalists' sake, let's say.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: This really just was his worldview.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: It just really was the way that he was, you know, drawn to staging scenes and so on.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, it's it would just always be a great tragedy that we lost him too young to be able to experience any kind of major variation in his career.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean we mentioned it, mentioned it at the start, but I mean he died working on a film called The Wind, starring and produced by Jackie Chan that was animated.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Same as Jean Ke.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: He was influenced by people like Antonioni, you know, which on the Outskirts podcast is probably marked.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_07: I wasn't expecting that, sorry.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_07: I didn't know that we hated Antonioni.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where when I'm watching Yang's films, I try to kind of keep that out of my mind because it's not helpful to me to see that.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but even though you know Antonioni was one of those guys for Yang that was important, you know, he was also just like a big manga fan.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he and he talked about that his whole life.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's that's what he liked the most.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_06: Because there are some like glimpses of that that th that likeness, of like perhaps more playfulness in the films, which are the moments that uh I'm more drawn to.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, I guess we already mentioned like a confusion confusion, but to me, I guess like just talking about uh a Right Summer Day, which I also had like this uh reluctance to watch initially because I'm like okay, so it's like three-hour long film, it's one of the again like the greatest films of all time.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_06: Then I was kind of kind of like very surprised by like how all this space to play around, like the period settings and the musicality of it, and it has kind of like this like all this kind of like being part of this like very big macro level kind of like ellipsis that's going through throughout the film.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_06: It kind of makes it like every moving to me.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_06: And to me, that that sense of playfulness and the sense of laboring says two things about the film is like naturally like its same power, but also I guess to me how I feel like deceived by the creative conversations about some of the aspects of Yang's work.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_06: It's the case that happens with a lot of filmmakers, uh even some of some of the ones we've discussed here, they kind of like create a reputation by virtue of how they're discussed, and then when you actually engage with the work, you kind of notice this like the little nuances and like divergences.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_06: I don't know if you've uh you guys had like any specific one that you felt like, okay, I didn't know Jang would move like this.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean that that's an interesting one because I mean uh Alonzo, you you kind of made it clear that for you those 80s films are kind of of a piece.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: But to me that day on the beach is something quite different to uh Taipei's story, which was just a couple of years later.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: And Taipei's story for me is like one of his one of my favourite of his films.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: And and is this kind of like coming together of so many different obsessions and interests in his films that I find very moving.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: In the space of a couple of years, he he moved from that day on the beach, which I think is this like I said, it's a kind of like uh almost like pre-code melodrama plot that's like just completely swollen to three hours on purpose because Yang is like very much interested in like gestures, the way people are sitting in rooms, like the opening shot with the phone and the way that the phone interacts with the woman.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like it's it's very modernist, you know, like just to use the lazy word, but kind of approach to cinema that you see a lot in festival films now, as we like often talk about, you know, like I wouldn't say it's slowness for slowness's sake, but it's definitely bordering on that somehow.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that's like the tension of that film to me.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas by the time of Taipei's story, I think like he's really hit on a certain like idea of the city and the relationship of people in a city and the relationship of cities to time and social transformations and so on and so on, that he's able to find these like really beautiful ways of staging.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: And this to me is like the the moment when I really understand like Edward Young's use of long takes because like these like long shots that happen in his films, they do seem to like contain an image that's staged in depth, and somehow through that, through the people's faces, through the way they interact, like you feel time passing in an interesting way.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_07: I guess it's a sense of belonging that you're talking about.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_07: Like in in that day on the beach, I f while I was watching it, I felt that people were just floating in the space, and because we also you have the flashback apparatus that's extensively used in the film, we don't like I mean, even structurally, because we go back and forth between this past and that there are some like discursive markers that say so you know that day like when she ex when she starts to explain what's happening that day, so we already given, not necessarily by means of the film, but like with the the verbal language, this framing.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_07: Whereas I think in Taipei's story, it's already there.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_07: I think these are more three-dimensional characters that they evolve in a certain space, and you get that they're really inhabiting that particular given apartment.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_07: Even when you think of the way the story is built, it's there are different times that the story is taking place.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_07: There are ellipses in the in Taipei story, but he uses such framings that we have a calendar, for instance, with Marlon Monroe's face, I think.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_07: So it gives you the sense of time passing.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_07: It's true the like not necessarily with verbal language, but the through images that you understand that time has passed.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_07: And that's I think some that's the force of Taipei's story.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_06: It's like despite uh feeling like that the 80s works as some kind of like having this like a structural similarity, similar similarities.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_06: I I do like feel like how each of them has their notice how they're what they're how they're going to live for different things.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_06: And uh I guess like I kind of like agree with what Oik was saying about like how to me that thing in the beach has this kind of like to me it's kind of like has like a central idea around journeying, but it's kind of like like a dissertation on the visuals of journey instead of actually like embracing kind of this like like metal like melod melodramatic narrative uh thrust that is kind of like has at its center, but it's kind of like detached from how it's like shot.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_06: Um it goes, I guess it goes again to like uh the like uh tires on like Antoniani reference, but it's kind of like a fill with like red desert and those kind of films.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_06: But it's true, like type-based story.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_06: To me, it flows like on three different levels that to me don't really connect at all points, which is kind of like the like the static level, which this film I guess like just like as uh as an exploration of like uh like lights and shadows and like the city scape as uh into like this kind of like tableau of like passing time.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_06: I think it's very powerful and it kind of reminds me a little bit of like uh Simon like Simon Yang's films in like the slower Similan films in some way.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_06: And automatically is the dramatic level, which is kind of like where the film kind of like falls apart a little bit for me, which I get I get once again like the melodrama and like the gestures the gestures in which he works to with, but I guess I think this film.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_06: This like suggestion of like affection still like from framework from to what I feel is kind of like a distance.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_06: So Tomilit doesn't really like intersect that much with the other layers of the film.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_06: And then there's like this like the big sweeping like contextual element of the film, which you see with like the rich indle drops, and with like a western influence in like the landscape film that the characters are inheriting.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_06: So Tommy's kind of like has these three different layers, and to me, there's like never up to me.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_06: I never feel like they these three kind of like uh coincide at all times at the same moment.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_06: And I was kind of thinking about that a lot.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_06: I thought of like a lot of different filmmaker, not from Taiwan, uh Yes and K.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_06: And I thought about like the political and like the uh dramatic in his films and like his way of approaching melodrama and like dialoguing with politics.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_06: I feel like those two filmmakers only take two of these three elements, and to me, they make perhaps like more successful works in their own way.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_06: And I feel like Yang like kind of embracing and going for like the home Roman approach of like, yeah, well, I'll do like the like consumer work of like uh East Asian late 20th century, like uh creators on the experience of like just like this moment in time.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I definitely hear what you're saying, but when I when I'm watching the film, I don't see those necessarily as three different uh tributaries, I see them as a single flow.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: And like a lot of the pleasure I did get out of the film is the kind of confluence of those different aspects.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there there is um a very nice uh quote review on Letterboxd by a friend of the podcast, Felipe Furtado from Brazil, um, where he talks about the film as like this film about the construction of an identity and what you lose in the process of that construction.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that's a very nice way to think about the film, it's a very nice way to think of the kind of low-key melodrama at the middle.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, like for me, like seeing that and appreciating the film on that level doesn't bring me away from you know, appreciating Ho Shao Shen's haircut or the bars that they spend time in, or all these like small details and pleasures of the film that are just like from the first moment when you all you know, there's these scenes inside the this prospective apartment that they want to buy, and I don't know, just like the simple staging of that, like this to me that's kind of overflowing with visual pleasure and like the pleasure of details, the pleasure of Hu Xiao Shen's character when he goes from place to place and he's paying the debts of the people and so on.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, to me it's all flowing into one.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I guess I just don't see it the same way.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I mean, one detail I really appreciated was the moment when he's watching a baseball game in uh his girlfriend's apartment, and uh he he f he he apparently fell asleep and his socks are in front of the TV screen.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_07: Like that small detail, and she comes back and she just like discovers him sleeping or like in her room.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_07: Like the setting is so casual but also well thought.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_07: Third aspect, you were mentioning the contextual Western um influences.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_07: I think there's uh when you mentioned Joe John Cate, I also found it interesting because there's a way of which these films appeal to Western aesthetics while like offering mild critiques of it, but also like openly uh embracing it.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_07: So it's it's like a double, it's a double play, let's say it's an interesting feeling because looking at those films from today's perspective, that like dark future of capitalism, of expansion, kind of feels nostalgic to us.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_07: So it it creates an interesting tension, like visual both on visual, because you see these like neon lights of Fuji film or this people dancing to food footloose, I think.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_07: And obviously it's it's like American culture invading from everywhere, but you just like at least I can't escape but feel that nostalgia.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: So their films are both like simultaneously a critique of the obvious garishness of these things.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's obvious, and it would become in Yang's films more obvious as the 90s took shape.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, you know, they love footloose, clearly, you know, in the same in the same way that you know you see again and again in Simon Yang's films like the same thing.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: You see, always interesting to me when you see these like tumbler forebearers of their of their style because those those guys and girls never like those things, and these guys have those eccentric tastes.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of reminds me of another uh Hong Kong film from this time called The Comrades Almost a Love Story that I love by Peter Chen, which is also set in a McDonald's and it also just has a clear just love of the like the setting of McDonald's and like the aesthetics of McDonald's in the 90s.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I think that's like something that I mean I I would kind of never take away from Yang, you know, no matter how arty he is and how kind of modernist he is.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: He is someone who yeah, he likes baseball, he likes Su Shao Shin socks, he likes uh these bars and this music, um, and that always followed him.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think yeah, maybe that's a good segue to those uh 90s films as well, if you want to talk about them, because I think in those films all of that becomes much more obvious, and I think for that reason, for a long time they weren't films that were particularly loved.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, again, we're we're not talking on the Doris Ushman scale here, we're talking on the Edward Yang scale.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, they still showed in Cannes and Berlin and won awards and so forth, but at least in my early Cinephilia, Mahjong and uh Confucian Confusion also were not really available because you know you had a guy who just like concluded a decade of making films on more or less the same subject, and these films are also on a very similar subject, but in a very different way, and therefore I think they've always been considered these sort of outliers in some way.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: Confucian Confusion is set in the TJI Fridays, Mahjong is set in a hard rock cafe, like doesn't get in more 90s than that.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like the guy knew how to how to stage scenes so that capitalism is obvious inside them.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_07: It's it's also I think this like um you know, um sprawling narratives is this objective they often use, like this describing Yang's films.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_07: But when you watch the the opening scene of Mahjong, it's just like you feel so lost in there, in that space, like in that crowded space.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_07: What is going on?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_07: Who are these people?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_07: Who's who's telling what?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_07: Why are these people here?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_07: So this kind of I think losing yourself in the in the in the space, in the in the interactions and transactions between people was what drawn me to the film because I was just like active all the time, just trying to understand, but not like in the in the sense of like making sense of what's going on.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_07: It's just like trying to find a point from which I can watch the film, but he just like removes that constantly in the film, and that's what I think I love in Mahjong.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I think, yeah, Mahjong is definitely interesting in those terms because it's also like it's you know, it's an Asian film in the late 90s when Asian films were getting a lot of French money, and it it that's also part of the film, like inescapably, because she's the protagonist and there's a lot of dialogue in English.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: But he he you know he doesn't try to hide that, he doesn't try to bury that within the film, like it's the text of the film.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's a film about a foreigner coming to a new Taipei that is now basically a sort of open port for the world.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: All these so-called expats are coming there and just kind of like using the city, uh sleeping with sex workers, uh going to the hard rock cafe every day, getting into petty crimes, and then getting in a bit over their heads, and then also there's the effect that has on like local people there and so on and so on.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like very much like at the heart of Mahjong, uh, in an interesting way.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's almost a comment on the fact that it's an international French production.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: This this is almost like the crack in his filmography where you can just see the light and like as these like degenerates in a file, you want to just go towards it.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: But Mahjong, the crack in Mahjong is the fact that uh he's working with English-speaking actors, not all of them English natives.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um and some of them are not good.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_07: They're not good, and you can be a like uh like adept uh Yangist and say, no, actually, it was just like doing that on purpose, but I don't think so.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: Nick Erickson.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: So the main kind of like shitty man in this movie is uh British guy, yeah, evil British capitalist driving a Mercedes-Benz.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: He originally was supposed to be played by David Thule, the great British actor from Naked, and David Tulis for some reason couldn't do it, so they just got this guy, and I mean he sucks.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so what do you mean?
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_06: He appreciates he had joy with deletion.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: You need to see Mahjong Alonso.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this is this is this is all kind of unprepared.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: This this is like uh the movie for you because it's like stiff acting, like right at the heart of like garage capitalism, messy, but it's it's sex work, yes, it's all there.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_06: I want to ask you guys because in a way, I guess like I felt deceived by the risers because it kind of has like this kind of the presentation of being kind of like a 50s kind of like noirish like plot, and it has like the the form or like the suggestion of like a like a genre film, but it's not a genre film at all.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_06: Like uh because in that film Jang like I think consciously eludes like the sensationalist aspects, and I know that's a reason what a lot of people love the risers.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_06: Uh that's not a reason that's to me not it isn't necessarily a good thing.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_06: But what what I heard of you describing my young kind of feels that he really embraces more of like perhaps the erraticness of like the like the genre construction and all like these perhaps nonsensical elements of the I don't know they're plotting or like the aesthetics, but it feels just like for listening to you guys, like he really like delves a little bit more perhaps than he allowed himself helps himself to in the 80s.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean I definitely wouldn't call it a straight-up genre film to be clear, so that like lower your expectations.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean it's just like it's a film that's open to a different kind of messiness, which I think is also in confusion confusion in in less of a way, because I think that's more sort of controlled.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: But it's just a film that's open to these things, you know, like and and again that's why it's such a tragedy that he died so young, because like in this film you really do feel that like that openness that like you know, because I can imagine that he he at some point would have been sick of making films like Yee, you know, and then he would have been ah let's go here, let's try this, let's try this, had some success, had some failures, had cast a guy like Nick Erickson, no shade him, but like, you know, who's bad, who doesn't do the you know, doesn't like embody the part in the way that so many of his other actors do.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's a film that's open to those things and and genre is like much more flowing through it, although I guess check yourself because it is still it still is what it is.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_04: These people chilled out four times the going rate for a metro that still doesn't work.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_04: These people have so much money stuffed up their hearts, it's beyond belief.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_04: You know, in ten years this place will be the center of the world.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_04: The future of Western civilization lies right here.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_04: And you know what the odd thing is?
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_04: We used to study history.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_04: The 19th century was the glorious age of imperialism, right?
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_04: Just wait till you see the 21st century.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_04: That's why Martre is here, and that's why I'm here, Martre.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_04: I was so lucky to end up here, and I had no intention of telling anyone back home about it.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_04: Keep this all to ourselves, Martre.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_04: I'm so glad you've come here.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_04: I missed you so much.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_04: There's so much that I want to share with you, Martre.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_05: Bing.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_05: This uh this is where I like to go.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_05: Hold on a second now.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_05: Like to go buy something.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to talk about Confucian Confusion?
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_06: He's the greatest film.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: So b so predictable, both of you.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_06: Come on, come on.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_06: I gotta say, I kind of feel bad because I knew as soon as I you mentioned like like uh like scribbles.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_06: I'm like, uh, this is gonna be my favorite one, right?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, you got you got us.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_07: What can I say?
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: The people the people listening to this podcast regularly are just like, oh, here we go.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean to be to to Alonzo's credit here, like when you said you loved Brighty Summer Day, I was like, wow, that that's that's surprising.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, credit to you for that.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_06: I do feel uh that there's I mean I want to justify myself.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_06: I do feel like he was kind of like going through like um, I think the writers, uh, as I was saying, uh kind of like presents the idea of like Jiang kind of like looking into like the western elements that he was like fascinated by as we've established, and kind of like playing with it.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_06: But again, like I felt to that film at least like he still has this kind of like detachment like more focused on like the spatialness and the architecture and like the modernist surveillance, the way he frames that he frames that narrative.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_06: But I uh just going to uh write some research briefly and how I see it in relationship to the other 90 films.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_06: That film to me, which to me I guess at this point, at some point in the 2000s I know it was a very like downing thing to say, but at least to me it's like a great thing to say in this point, like it feels almost like Espilovarian in a way.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_06: The way it kind of like creates this kind of like uh very like sappy at some points, like uh melodramatic and look at like like nost nostalgic, but also kind of like uh dialogue in a more like profound way with the context creating.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_06: But it's kind of like every scene is kind of like this like um contained dramatic uh sequence, uh which kind of to me is I don't know, I don't know he was he I don't think he was like this just to make it.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_06: But it kind of like provides this kind of like western template of uh report with west western template of like this like great like sweeping film like through the truth different times and that which I feel that like uh ability to fully like commit and like has immerse himself and his filmmaking and perhaps little like himself be a bit like looser in that way.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_06: I feel that's in a right summer day despite being this like great masterpiece.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_06: Um perhaps it's clear in the next uh two films in uh you're seeing the imagination and confusion confusion, which I feel like it's essentially doing the same, but perhaps like less respectable milose.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_06: Perhaps every sequence as well is kind of like self-contained, kind of a gag or setup, which just keep keeps moving and keeps moving through these like intersections with like the confusion um plot device at the heart of it.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_06: So I guess just like this feels like the playfulness and the game itself of the film is perhaps in the most overt manner he's done.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, I think he did throughout his career.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: He kind it kind of reminds me of this uh anecdote about uh Chantal Ackerman that she you know, because when people would talk about her, they would think that the kind of films that she wanted to make was like all Jean Dielman or whatever.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um but when people would ask her, she was like, No, I really want a lot of money.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: I want to make you know a big musical, I want to have Juliette Dino.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, or like the Couch in New York.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: Couch in New York, exactly.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, her greatest film.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still I'm still like even months later, recovering from Emmanuel Five is Borovshake's most personal film.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you can tell that one.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so she she was also someone, you know, like did you you think that she wants to make one kind of film, but it's like, no, I don't like I'm happy to make desk, but I also want to make a couch in New York.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's I want to have money, I want to work.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting when you think of Yang in that way that you know, Bright the Summer Day is not not just dialoguing with his earlier films, but also with films by Hu Xiao Shen, also with kind of films from that period from Asia, you know, this part of Asia.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I mean I I love that movie, but it's like you know, it's about uh change from one era to another, it's about the dictatorship, it's about this and that, you know, capitalism is coming, the end of the war, blah blah blah blah blah.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: And also it's a personal film.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: So almost like I think it's sometimes useful to think of that in terms of like genre.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: So you think like that's the genre that he did on that one, and then he came off it and he wanted to do something that was more like a couch in New York, but for Edward Yang.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it's you know, I also just like Mahjong, I also don't want to like um overstate that it's like very different and very messy, like it is different, but it's still very much like his sort of thing.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: And same as in the earlier films, he he's getting a lot out of like staging plots against sort of in settings where these ideas about like capital relations and uh the changing nature of Taiwanese society and blah blah blah blah can just like flow through the film because it's set there.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: In this case, it takes place basically in this kind of office spaces, anonymous office spaces in a new urbanized Taipei that is like at the heart of the 90s uh Asian boom.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, once he's done that, then he can make whatever film he wants because those energies are just gonna flow through it.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually a film that really reminds me a lot of um this amazing Fritz Lang film called You and Me.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's a musical set in a department store uh and has songs by Kurt Vale.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, like obviously, it's the most Brechttian film you can imagine.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that's also just here, you know, just like through the setting, through his conception of scenes and so on, all these things like managed to flow through it, and suddenly, you know, uh light romantic comedy, the relations between the characters can also seem like commentary on business relations somehow.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_07: When I f uh first watched Confusion Confusion, I thought about Romer, but then I was like maybe not that much because I think Romer is someone who's like afraid of fully adapting and fully assuming the humor humoristic aspects.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_07: Like he goes around, but I think Edward Yang here takes some risk of like laughing, like it it re it it is it's it's openly funny.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_07: I think in Romer's case he's he's like a comedy of couple comedies or couple dramas, dramedies are always like they're not really taking risks of like going to maybe like making them look like as grotesques.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_07: You wouldn't you would never expect to Romer to like a go full slapstick mode.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_07: That's maybe like the messiness comes from.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_07: But I also thought about Shakespeare.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_07: Like I think it's like a modern Byron comedy when you think of that.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_06: I was thinking of like of like uh like dialogues between like the Morris Chevalier, like said, like like late 1920s or early 30s uh kind of Lewic films and this film randomly are in these like very specific, like like upper middle class kind of like upper class kind of like uh settings that can only exist in the Mummy and Rang.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_06: I was thinking the same about this film.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_06: I kind of like I think it was like despite loving Red Summer Day, I guess this one kind of like retreatly explained to me also my life of this film.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_06: To me, I know I know it kind of the first time he wasn't pondering about like the sociopolitical context, he was just fully like in-houring and letting his characters just like be there.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_06: And I was like, uh you were saying Chris also like this allowed like him to like loosen up and just like that weight is already there just like the just like like the space itself and how like the characters inhabit these like cramped spaces, urban spaces, and all these like western signifiers are also like part of the conversations, and then like the quick fire dialogue also has these references.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_06: So in a way it's kind of like already like there, so he doesn't need to leave this kind of like spatial pundering that to me at least like bothers me at times.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_06: So that's also kind of like a part of that which which to mean how this film kind of encompasses encompasses like his whole whole work to me, like more precisely.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_07: When you say special spatial pondering, I it reminds me of the opening sc scene of actually Taipei story.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_07: Like making a space as a character, like introducing a character, like apart from the the characters that uh inhabit them.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_07: That's what you're referring to.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_07: I think he in he in he does that in Yee quite a lot as well.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_06: He also does that here, but perhaps it's less uh signaled just by the fact that the compositions are a little bit like uh less ornate or less less it's like open spaces that are more like uh I don't know like uh easier to put like as a screensaver.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_06: Like here is just like these like messy rooms full of people, like makes them perhaps less aesthetically like appealing immediately.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_06: Although I agree, like to me to me they also have like they show this like spatialness, but perhaps in a way that I feel less didactic.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: Shall we talk about Yi Yee?
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: I love Yi Yee.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh wait the first time I saw Yi, yeah, this is like Alcoholics Anonymous.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is what Cynophilia can do, where you're like, I'm sorry everyone, I love Yee.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: I have to admit it.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: First time I saw this film, I had much of the same reaction that it's like this.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously a masterpiece with a capital M, and but it's also just a bit too kind of controlled for me and a bit settled.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's no film for me to discover in here.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: But watching it again after many years and watching it closely as well, like I said, watching it like once and then watching it again, like half-watching.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I really the the the rhythms of this film really kind of grew on me.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: And like this like as I said, when I listened to the audio commentary, but also just watching the film, I just got the sense of Yang as this kind of great narrative stylist.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: Over the course of three hours is really able to kind of just master the dynamics between this family, um, depicting characters in like a small way, in a long shot, which then a few scenes later will flower into a much richer character.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um really, I think in this film, the only character who kind of gets a short shrift is the the mother of the family who basically falls for falls for a guru and disappears in the mountains for the entire movie.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: But other than that, I mean it's just such a like well-balanced piece of narrative cinema, and also like the the fact that he something that I never really kind of conceptualize within Yang's body of work is just how much this is like a master shot film, in the way that he's not really a master shot filmmaker.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: He's a slow filmmaker, he's a filmmaker who uses like distance and so on, but he is someone who loves to move the camera like right from the beginning.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: And Mahjong and Confusion and Confusion are like very obviously that, you know, the camera's moving all over the place.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: But then he gets the Yi and it's like really static film.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's actually, I think, almost no camera movement in it.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I know it's interesting, it's almost like, you know, the way the film is conceptualized, it's like this perfect farewell statement that was accidental because he didn't know he was sick when he was making it.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: But to me, when I watch it, it's like almost the start of something else, like the start of a new aesthetic experiment.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: And there are just like throughout this film so many beautiful uses of this like static movement within frames, especially because he developed this really eccentric and interesting use of uh reflections, which has never been a thing in these films before.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: So suddenly in Yee, you're watching like whole scenes take place through reflections in the window, or it's a static shot where the reflections are giving movement to the frame.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean to me this is a really, really special film.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_07: I was I was thinking of like this idea of like static camera as a like the the an extension of the the obstruction that the the the conceptual abstraction that they talk about in the film, like no no like how to have to how to look at someone, how to know someone.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_07: So I think it also dialogues with that I mean that maybe that's the obvious reading of it.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_06: Uh I I see this the god between Yiji and a bright summer day, which I think perhaps are well it's mostly lame films, but to me are very, very different in many ways.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_06: Especially in this like again, like sweeping like um family dramas, this like little like small like microcosm of like a wider nation.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_06: Because here I think as Chris was saying, like the compositions themselves kind of like get to a point where it kind of like reminds me a little bit more of like the 80s.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_06: Like the I I think like the drama here is very like better like encompassed and envisioned, perhaps a little bit with what I filmed uh in the 80s films, which I know I know I know it's there, but there perhaps here it's like integrated in a way where it's just like the novelistic element, I think, of how the film flows to me is perhaps a little bit like I feel it's hitting me on the head a little uh a lot more in this film through like uh the symbolic gestures and like the the way like the framing and the angles where he's framing is perhaps in a more prevalent way, whereas I feel like in a bright summer day, to me at least like he lays lets those things like I was just saying, like play out a little bit more like organically.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_06: Like I here I feel like every sequence has this kind of like it starts out like this like per perfect tableau that could just be like very like ornate construction, which isn't a bad thing.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_06: This is like I was just like talking about like the temperament, but it kind of seems to me like going back a little bit to those perhaps like grander gestures that uh just to me are perhaps a little bit less interesting even comparison to like a write some more data.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_07: Um but don't you think that these like compositions are also a way of like representing the the states in which characters find themselves?
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_07: Because the film is about like missed opportunities, so it's always about this uh the material or emotional situations that characters find themselves and then they can't change like can't change this, but only imagine changing them or like making an effort on them.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_07: So it's it's a way of like representing this idea, maybe.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_07: So from that point of view, I think it makes sense that they are they are like static moments uh within the frame.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, and I can totally see why this film kind of became uh is kind of like a textbook of like uh like film at film analysis in that way, because it clearly it's like clearly justified with like the emotional landscape of the of the characters.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think the Spielberg reference is very interesting.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'd never thought about that before, but like he's a very Spielbergian filmmaker in some way.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I think people listening to this will be just you know instantly unsubscribing now.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_06: I think that's brazenly.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: Me too.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think like you know, his his eccentric films are like Spielberg's eccentricities, and then the kind of masterworks are like Spielberg's masterworks in some way.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: But it's just like it's yeah, it's like this view of like time and space, which is like very formalist and very idiosyncratic and very kind of like self-consciously genius, combined with like certain narrative tendencies that are like you have to take them or leave them.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how I feel about Yi, especially on this second viewing, you know, it's almost like um like when I watch like the Spielberg films that I like, where I just have to just like be like, okay, this is the movie, and I have to just accept it as it is.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a little bit like that with the the kid in Yi, not because he's as as annoying as the kids in Spielberg films, but because he kind of uh articulates the themes of the film very strongly.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I I guess I just don't see that as a bad thing anymore.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe just because I found my way into the film and I've just accepted it.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: And also, it's true that Yi Yi is kind of something apart, but it is also a film that was made in a very opportunistic way, because it was at this time that was um the end of the century, so there was a lot of money.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was an idea that Yang had knocking about in his head for a while, which I think was to make a film about someone's entire life.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, then it came possible that he could get some Japanese money uh by making a kind of Japanese-Taiwanese co-production.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: So he like rewrote the story instead of making it one person's life from birth to death, he made it a family, and then you know, split basically the different parts of life into different family members, and then just shoehorned in this Japanese aspect to get the film made.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think today that the film is really studied and and copied in that way as kind of a model of what a co-production between Asian countries can look like.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_01: But there there was something like interesting that he said um that that I read that he said, which was that um like for him, like he discovered in Yi Yi that Japan is a that the Taipei Taipei is really a Japanese city, and a lot of the characteristics of Taipei, as Oiko, I guess maybe we'll find out if it's still preserved there, um, come from the fact that Taipei was basically, you know, built the city that it is now by the Japanese during the colonial period and after.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um so Yang said that when he was going to Tokyo, especially for the first time, but also to do this filming, he could just like stand in different parts of Tokyo and be like, ah, this is like the Taipei of the 60s.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's where he found a lot of those Japanese scenes, you know, where the the dad and his um ex-lover are walking around and holding hands at these like train crossings, which used to be ubiquitous in Taipei and no longer there.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, I mean it's it's just such a rich film.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_06: I think the lyricism he was kind of building uh through like uh to me at least to like a bright summer day and what so this feels to me like kind of like has that like fable like elements in how the drama is constructed uh that really appealed to me in a bright summer day, and I kind of feel like I still hear like the nostalgia and all this like romantic way in which he kind of like frames the passive of time to me is still like very like uh palpable in how he deals with like uh dramatic progression in in this film, and also the compositions despite me like uh bitching about them a little bit, at times are quite stunning and quite powerful in like a sense that it it isn't like as overridden or like as uh load with symbolism where they're just like come from like an affective place, which like I I don't take for granted particularly.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_06: Uh again, when a filmmaker that uh thing is often described more than this formally sense, but I think like these kind of like almost like contingent moments of like pure emotion kind of like taking over his form to me are quite quite stunning.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: Edward Young, thumbs up or thumbs down from the Arts Gets I'd say he gets a pass.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_07: But have you been watching anything interesting in the past two weeks?
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_06: I have to like um do like a little pl palette cleanser of all this like uh artfulness and like master mastery.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_06: From mastery to masturbatory.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_06: What do you mean?
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_06: These are works of art.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_06: Uh I saw one of them actually at the VFI, the uh least sexy venue of all time.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_06: I saw like two different uh queer porno films.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_06: One of them uh I saw another trash season, which I think I mentioned in the last episode, uh, which was actually a double feature with Another Day, Another Man, a Doris Witchman film that you can uh hear more about in our previous podcast episode.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_06: Uh I think Chris isn't as uh as a fan uh a fan of that one.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't see it, I didn't see it in the temple of cinema of the BFI.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think it would be a different experience.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, just like I think that I was just like mentioning like it's kind of like flows like an LFNA film in a way, because the way it's kind of like just like constructing all this like weird, like like formal kind of like transitions, and yeah, it's like I don't know, totally like formal in hinge.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_06: You can see like the seams of like the reuse footage like once again and again and again.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_06: It almost becomes like algorithmic pattern in a way, it's kind of like a structure is structuralist film accidentally almost.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, but besides that um wishman film, there was also like quite a discovery for me was the Elevator Girl Gerald's in Bondage, the 1972 film.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_06: So poetic Michael Coleman, which essentially like the whole gimmick, I don't know how familiar you are with uh the croquettes, which were kind of like this like queer like drug act in the 1970s San Francisco that were very like famous, popular, and like important in like the uh underground like uh gay scene in San Francisco.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_06: So this film is basically built by like around a couple of them, and they hear me out.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_06: The plot itself, despite being a porno, it has like only one like hardcore sequence, which is almost towards the end of the film, and the rest is seeing like this like like drag queen characters just like embody the their role as this like very like horny and like kinky like uh elevator girls working in this hotel, which everyone at the hotel is staying is kind of like this like horn dog kind of like a text avery wolf cartoon character.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_06: And what they do is like they start like seeing that they're they haven't been like compensated well enough, so they they unionize.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_06: So the whole film literally has like a whole sequence, so I'm like reading from like the Communist Manifesto and Marx Das Capital.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_06: So like the drag queen uh characters just literally start doing like uh Marxist diatribe, uh and that leads into like the like very elaborate and like beautifully shot and edited like hardcore sequence in the film, uh which is kind of like a forum one.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_06: And all these of this happens in like 56 minutes, and also more importantly, I don't want to spoil it, but it has like a kaiju ending in the film.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: As if it wasn't enough already.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_06: So this film has just to make it clear, it has das capital, has kaiju, and has comchets.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_06: So if cinema was and all all of that in 56 minutes.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_06: So yeah, one of the greatest films of all time.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, just to briefly mention the other one I was gonna mention.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_06: It's perhaps more like a uh high-row pick within the the cinema canon, which is uh Wakefield pulls uh boys in the sand.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_06: The reason it became popular is because it's almost like a French kind of thought kind of like impressionist film, which happens to have like four different setups of like uh people having sex in the beach.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_06: Uh but yeah, I again like I I knew of this film because of that comparison and just like actually saying it's when I saw in my laptop just having a film the BLC player just like as a formal like piece of filmmaking, it is on par with like again like Epstein or whoever you want to mention in that sense.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_06: And I kind of made me interested a lot of like Wakefield Pool as a filmmaker as well.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_06: I kind of wanted to see more of his work because to me a film is kind of like kind of like could be in like an art host textbook, honestly.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_01: If only they were in an art host textbook.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm almost ashamed to say what I've been watching now in light of what you just said, because I mean not ashamed exactly, but it's like so much the opposite of what you've been watching that it's like really hard to like find a pivot point to get there.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_01: I've been watching films by Niels Marmos, the Danish director, who I'm working on a program of his films for later this year.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I just wanted to revisit some of the ones that I haven't seen.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I've loved Marmos' films for a long time, um, and he's like, I would say, the ultimate middle brow filmmaker, and actually will be like a very, I think, very interesting test for this podcast when we inevitably do him.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know whether later this year or sometime in the future.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh because I think to love Marmos is to like totally embrace the middle browness of these films and see them for what they like are or what they what they can be, um, which you can only get to through through that route.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like you have to accept that first, and then you can go you can go distances.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he he's famous for a film called uh The Tree of Knowledge, which is um from 1981 and is a film that was shot over I think six or seven years with a bunch of children.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_01: So you see in this narrative like the children literally age uh as the film is going on.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, it's like boy boyhood.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it's like the pre it's like the pre-boyhood.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_01: Boyhood, so I don't nothing to be ashamed of there.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_07: This is also alcoholic meeting.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_07: I like boyhood.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, so so but Manuels is like all his films are about his um his his basically his own life and his family.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_01: They're all like dramas based on his own life.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: And boy, has he had a life.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's um very, very sad life with lots of unimaginable things happening.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but these films are also like very Danish as well, like the the the drama is like really premised on the idea of a country that essentially has no social problems and like everybody's rich, even in the 60s.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's also something you have to get get used to.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I think once you buy into that, once you get through these levels, once you sort of don't listen too much to the to the musical soundtrack, um like these films are really, really special.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I saw two that I hadn't seen, um, Aching Hearts from 2009 and Facing the Truth from 2002, which are two of his last films.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: And Facing the Truth is a film uh about his dad, who's a famous uh neurosurgeon and was using this radioactive material uh to do um x-rays of children's heads, and a lot of people got cancer.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_01: And uh Aching Hearts is another film made with uh, in this case, adolescents over a five-year period, so you just also see them age, and it's about his um adolescence and so on.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, you know, they are these like very well-made middle-brow dramas, but when you watch them at some point, like they go further and deeper, and they're colder and harsher than you would expect.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: And particularly with uh aching hearts, it really helped me to rediscover Marmos in a way and to like remember what I love so much about his films because that film takes you to a certain point and then it goes further, and there's a kind of like darkness and brutality in those films that I think very few other films can offer, as well as beauty and joy and so on.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_01: What about you, Oko?
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_07: And I'm uh the Madame uh ambassador of festivals.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_06: I I was at yeah, you're the only one who ever had anything to say about new films was engaging actually, like I was having film.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_07: I was unfortunately uh at Vision du Real and had to amazing chance to see uh mid uh mid-documentaries from the the Switzerland, Switzerland.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_07: And uh honestly, I feel like this year I did my best to not watch as many as films I wanted because often they turn out to be quite uh underwhelming.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_07: Um I started with this um film called uh From Dawn to Dawn, which uh won the uh won the I think a Grand Prix.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_07: Um this was the first film I watched, so I think I graded a bit lower, but it really grew on me because it's about this um uh filmmaker, uh filmmaker who makes a film about uh her brother uh after immigrating to Barcelona becomes involved with the Chinese uh mafia in Spain.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_07: And once once you read the synopsis, it it feels like this, I think, quirky or maybe like in like very interesting or noir kind of film, but it's it was very introspective and full of um silences or empty moments that you want to like fill, but she decides to just leave them as it as they are.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_07: So I think after a while, after watching other films, it really started to just like I wanted to revisit it again.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_07: So it was a good discovery, at least.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_07: Um then I saw a film that Alonso also saw, which I was just so annoyed and like frustrated with it.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_07: It's called a case the case the case against space.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_07: I'm like Vision Dural has like a really good marketing team, I think, because they have they know how to pick uh stills and they know how to like sell the film to you because this film was actually about a very interesting uh case um which the filmmaker refers to.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_07: To as the first um strike uh in space by astronauts who work in the space program.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_07: And apparently, while they were in uh in the space program called Skylab, they decide to like not work because of the uh exhausting and um very chaotic work conditions.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_07: So he creates this uh experimental or free style uh fabulation about this strike.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, the idea itself is very interesting, but uh he uses reenactment as form, and boy, what a reenactment it was.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_07: Uh it's very lo-fi amateur aesthetic, which I can understand, but it was just so freshman years, acting school type of acting.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_07: Uh they they play astronauts and they talk to camera all the time, and it's just like the film is around 72 minutes, and like 80% of this film, just three astronauts, like care like the actors, talking to uh camera and explaining what's going on in the space in the in the in the ship or in the whatever uh and I was expecting something about like with archival-based, I guess, and there were some archival stuff.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_07: I wish it was just like a short film for 20 minutes, it would have been much more interesting.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_07: So those two were I think uh let's like if to to mention briefly from Vision Dural.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_07: And I also re-watched a Turkish film, uh Turkish, Italian, Spanish co-production.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_07: Maybe you guys already know about this.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_07: It's called uh the Steam, Turkish Bath.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_07: I had uh I was invited to uh introduce and have hold a discussion uh about it.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_07: So it was a it was a lovely screening, but I mean the film we also had a chance to like criticize it about the orientalistic gaze.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_07: It's it's a film that often people refer to as this like oh two gay men in bath, like kissing, like it's especially for like Turkish young cinophiles, it it just like at some point was this highlights of like LGBT representation, but it's not that it's not that big.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_07: It's just like there's a scene in the film that uh two men kiss kiss, but it's not it's not like uh changing the world or it's not revolutionizing the LGBTQ representation in Turkish cinema, but it's just like a Urtext in a way.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_01: Snow Wakefield Pool.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and um you know people also would like refer to it as like a Turkish call me by your name.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_07: But but I think uh the film has fabric of missed opportunities, like you see some sparks of interesting themes that the filmmaker could have like pursued, or you just like while watching it again, I s I felt like oh, I wish he'd like filmed more the architecture of the Turk the Turkish bath, Hamam.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, I wish he we could have like see we could have seen the way a person walks into city.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_07: How how to depict someone discovering a new city that they like these kind of like formal concerns, it was totally lacking in the film.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_07: And some they've also had a lot of like stereotypical um representation of like a Turkish culture from the perspective of an Italian person, like oh, Turkish people like they always eat a lot, they're super like heartwarming and open and generous, but they also talk a lot, that kind of thing.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_07: The reason I find it interesting it's also is also the filmmaker, it's a it's a first film, but it's also um a filmmaker who like immigrated to italy like years ago.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_07: So I think it's a gaze that is embedded with the outsider's gaze naturally.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_07: So even like he's born in Turkey, he's like lived there.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_07: So the outsider is gaze, the oriental is gaze, you kind of interiorize that.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_07: And as a as a case study, I find that interesting.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much for listening.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_01: That was our episode on Edward Yang.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, next week we will move from this filmmaker, the maker of seven feature films, to a filmmaker who made 112 feature films.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_01: That is Mr.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Atif Ilmaz.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, Oiku can be the one who suffers from mispronunciations on this podcast.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_01: So buckle up next week.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to a standbull.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want to send any letters, feedback, comments, whatever, you can send it at outskirtsfilmmagazine at gmail.com, and we'll see you in two weeks.