That Day, on the Beach (1983)

That Day, on the Beach (Edward Yang, 1983)
Mandarin Title: Haitan de yitian

There's an impressive sequence in Edward Yang's debut feature That Day, on the Beach wherein we see Jia-li (Sylvia Chang), who is trapped in an unhappy marriage, stuck in an elevator with another woman. The woman, dressed in fiery red compared to her dull black, is the paramour of her husband De-wei (David Mao). The scene is tightly shot: Jia-Li is seen in the foreground and through the elevator's mirror, we see the paramour. The motionless scene is followed by their confrontation: the husband, who is abroad for business reasons, has switched their letters and the paramour is returning the letter to her while revealing her secret love affair with Jia-Li's husband. The confrontation retains the quaint and relaxed atmosphere. You can tell that the sequence is simmering with repressed emotions but nothing is ever let out. Life continues on, in a constant state of melancholy.

That's basically Yang's theme right there. He fills the movie with these quiet moments, dictating these moments with the clarity and importance of a historical event but none of the overstated dramatics. It is told with straightforward relevance by Jia-Li to her brother's ex-girlfriend (Teresa Hu) years after their last meeting. Yang's film is told through a series of flashbacks all relating to the titular incident in the beach wherein Jia-Li's husband was supposedly drowned to death. The body cannot be located, nor are they sure that the victim was indeed Jia-Li's husband but it is the moment wherein Jia-Li is gripped by a more palpable sense of uncertainty. All her life, she is dragged by the circumstances paved for her but at that exact moment, she's suddenly in a centerpoint in her adult life.

That Day, on the Beach is credited as the starting point of the Taiwanese New Wave and the career of Yang (it is also the first work of Christopher Doyle as cinematographer). It is easily representative of the distinct sensibilities of his nation's contemporary cinema (as continued by Yang himself, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and to a certain degree, Tsai Ming-liang). The film evokes a fathomable ache that inhabits the newly wealthy middle-class of Taipei: the way a lucrative job turns a lovely marriage into an essentially empty and torturous predicament. The film details the effects of the new-found commercialism the economic boom has provided: how designer clothes or sleeping pills are supposed to ease the lack of love in a marital relationship.

Yet above the subtle societal backdrop that Yang points out in the film, it is the empathetically portrayed story of Jia-Li that draws the most interest. Yang clearly understands Jia-Li's predisposition and dilemma. There are flashbacks within the flashbacks that show Jia-Li as a young girl and how she witnesses her mother's subdued nature against her father's sexual trysts. That quiet conversation with her brother just before she escapes from an arranged wedding conjures illusions of a promising future; yet the seduction of a free life does not deliver its supposed promises as Jia-Li furthers lower in the quagmire of shallow living.

But Yang does not dwell in melancholy (although he depicts melancholy so effectively). His interest is humanity's capacity to change which is the reason why Jia-Li's story is told in past tense rather than as a continuing experience. He understands the value of the past (how Jia-Li's decisions since she was a little girl has shaped who she is) but maintains an uncertain but more optimistic stance for the future. He reveals the scars of Jia-Li's life but assures that these wounds are either closed or closing. His confrontations are quiet, painful, and deep but in a way, they are relevant and important in letting go.

Jia-Li would conclude her tale with the death of her brother, wherein he leaves the world with a few acerbic messages on how he has led his life following his father's steps from the profession he chose to the girl he marries. It is an essential end to the never-ending questions that haunted the incomplete soul of the girl that character has abandoned for his decision to be perpetually dictated. It seals that undefinable what-if in the pianist's past, and sufficiently closes that chapter of Jia-Li's life wherein she has been subdued by the men in her life.

The act of communication and revelation releases both female characters from being imprisoned by their respective pasts and male tormentors. Yang plays doting master to his fractured characters that despite the melancholy of their scenarios, he breathes to them that human ability to heal and move on.

Edward Yang died at an early age of 59 leaving the world with films that depicted reality with brutal honesty but with tender humanism. Previous to That Day, on the Beach, I've only seen his quiet masterpiece Yi Yi (A One and a Two, 2000), a film that is so rich with nuances that it took me more than one viewing to at least appreciate his sage-like interpretation of several generations of life blossoming in slow and almost painful grandeur. His death has caused a wave of mournful odes from cinephiles worldwide. I cannot think of a greater way to mourn his sudden passing than to celebrate the feature film that began his illustrious career.

Café Lumière (2003)

Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2003)
Japanese Title: Kôhî jikô

Hou Hsiao-hsien's Café Lumière, his tribute to the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, ends with a spectacular image, trains criss-crossing each other. It's spectacular because it is so simple yet undeniably powerful: those noisy transportation vehicles chugging along in their sure paths all at the same time and in the same frame. Despite these trains' existence in that exact moment of time in that contained space of cinematographer Lee Pin Bing's frame, it seems that each of the train is not aware of the other's existence.

Like the trains are the characters in this Hou film, curiously opaque in their dealings with others and unable to relate emotionally. Yoko (Yo Hitoto) has just returned from Taiwan and is now in Japan researching about Taiwanese composer Jiang Wen-ye, who spent some years in Japan, even marrying a Japanese girl who he would later on abandon forever. Helping her is bookshop owner Hajime (Tadanobu Asano) whose hobby is to record the sounds of trains. There seems to be something going on between the two of them; something more than just mere companionship and less than a romantic relationship.

When Yoko arrives in Japan, the first in her to-call list is the geeky Hajime and while everyone (including her parents) gets a Taiwanese umbrella, Hajime's present is an expensive looking pocket watch (commemorating the anniversary of the building of the railways in Taiwan). Within the deliberate blurring of Yoko and Hajime's relationship is the preoccupation to discover the existence of the cafe Jiang Wen-ye frequented, a pastime that feels like the lifetime of their relationship. When the search ends, their trains depart from each other (not without a final visit; again, a rather opaque visit to a sick friend, than a burst of emotionality). Again, it is summed up in a beautiful scene: two disconnected trains meet up in a moment of time in the same tight frame. On one train is Yoko, and the other is Hajime unaware of each other's existence in those disconnected trains.

Then there's Yoko's relationship with her stepparents. After visiting Hajime in his shop, she visits her parents in their home and announces that she is pregnant to a Taiwanese student. This is Hou in his most Ozu-like. The blocking, the tatami-shots (low angle shots, just below the head), the hefty air of familial conflict that pervades the space that separates the characters. There's an undeniable tension that erupts when Yoko, and her parents are at the same frame: the silent and clearly disappointed father, the overly maternal stepmother, and the daughter who has distanced herself quite considerably from her family.

Ozu is clearly the most Japanese of all the Japanese directors. His films, despite their universal themes, depict a certain visual appeal that sits very well with Japanese culture. His style is relaxed, deliberately meditative, and conscious of the little patterns and routines. It can be argued that Hou's style is comparable to Ozu's. However, Hou's themes are distinctly Taiwanese or implicitly universal. In Café Lumière, Hou removes himself from the language and the familiar locales and its rich history that he's been so good with. The result is not always perfect. Hou's pacing is so painstakingly detailed, his characters so disconnected with the world, the story so slight, that the film feels inconsequential. Then Hou creates these beautiful images, like the final scene, that suddenly wakes me up from a near-slumber that the filmed inaction almost lured me to.