Yang's great if challenging Taiwanese film A Brighter Summer Days

I broke w/ my convention - I usually post on the movies and shows I'm watching the day after I finish watching the film or series - but for this major film, A Brighter Summer Day (1991), I watched it twice, the second time with the excellent Criterion Channel commentary by Tony Rayns, as I really felt I had no grasp on the work after one viewing (spread out over several evenings). Overall, this is a terrific movie by the late Taiwanese director Edward Yang - an excellent examination of the lives of several teenagers in Taiwan in 1960, about 10 years after their families fled from mainland China and Mao's revolution and settled in Formosa. The despite its strengths, is incredible challenging for a # of reasons: first, it's 4 hours long! Second, there are, according to Rayns, more than 100 speaking parts. 3rd, the young men at the center of the film can be hard to distinguish from one another as they are always seen in their school uniforms (a pseudo-military outfit). Most of all, there's a lot of assumed background that very few Western viewers today will have any info about - and Rayns does fill us in well in his commentary. In essence there are 3 youth "gangs" in the film, each from a different social class; knowing that will help viewers follow the intricate plot. There's so much in this film, though, for better or worse: 3 gangs and their rivalries, 3 killings (at least), a story line about young love (Si'r and Ming are the central "couple" in the movie) and its fatal consequences, a story line about a film under production in a local studio, a story line about the interrogation by the Taiwanese police and its effect on a family, a story line about young boys who dream of success singing American pop songs (which they memorize phonetically even though they know no English; the film title is from an Elvis recording that the boys are studying), antagonism between native Formosans and the relocated mainland Chinese, a discipline issue in the school and a father's attempts to get his son (Si'r) transferred into a better program, family tensions between a near-broken father and the socially ambitious wife, class tensions within the school as a lonely but wealthy student stirs up antagonism, and I could go on. Some of the greatest scenes are filmed in a highly unusual manner, mostly in the dark (a great gang fight illuminated only by flashes of light) or dialog with the main speaker - Si'r often - offscreen; Yang does many scenes, however, with just a long take and a camera in fixed position, a style familiar from many classic Japanese films. Yang went on to direct the great film Yi Yi, which is more accessible than Bright Summer Day, but this one seems to have established him as a highly ambitious and intelligent filmmaker. As Rayns says in his commentary, this film is a something like an indie-art film done to epic proportions. Exactly right!