One of the great films of the 21st century: Edward Yang's Yi Yi

The last film by the late Taiwanese writer-director Edward Yang, Yi Yi (2000), has a solid claim to be one of the greatest movies of the century (so far); I posted recently on Yang's earlier film, A Brighter Summer Day, also a terrific film though a little more challenging for American viewers, as it requires, or at least improves, with a little fore-knowledge about the Taiwanese history of immigration from mainland China. Yi Yi (translated roughly as A one, an' a two...) requires to special topical knowledge - it's a straight-out brilliant film at 3+hours (and worth all of that - and today would probably be conceived as a miniseries) about a year in the life of a Taiwanese family, beginning with a wedding and ending w/ a funeral. Over the course of the film we see each member of the family going through a personal crisis, some by the end of the year/film stronger for the experience, others perhaps not. The central event that drives the plot concerns the teenage daughter, Ting Ting; at the outset, she made a mistake and forgot to take out the garbage from their upper-story apartment; her grandmother, who'd not been feeling well, took out the garbage on her own and suffered a stroke in doing so. Ting Ting is thereafter consumed by guilt and remorse. Over the course of the film, each family member speaks in monologue to the near-comatose grandmother, and these monologue scenes are powerful, moving, revealing, and sometimes strange. Other plot elements developing over the course of the film involve the young brother who's being picked on by some kids at school and develops an interest in photography (an obvious analog for the director himself); the father who has an encounter with the girlfriend of his youth and is an uncomfortable fit in a youth-dominated Taipei electronics firm; and the mother, who suffers a nervous breakdown and spends time in a New Age retreat. So much happens in the film, and it all feels real and engaging - and we watch much of the action through windows in the tall apartment buildings, office buildings, and street scenes (such as a NY Bagels coffee shop) in then modern-day Taipei (with some sequences, far more placid and serene, in Japan/Tokyo). The concluding moments of the film a fantastic, guaranteed to bring a sob or tear. The early death of Yang was a tremendous loss to world cinema, a writer-director who worked at the height of cinematic naturalism, on a par, it would seem, with Ozu, Kurosawa, Bresson, maybe Bergman (though less existential), yet with a style and deliberate pacing of his that could carry and advance several interwoven plot lines that build upon one another and move the narrative toward a powerful, unified conclusion.