Film: Yi Yi (A One And A Two...)
Directed by Edward Yang
Taiwan (2000)
Family Drama/Ensemble Drama
17 parts/170 mins
In Mandarin (Chinese) with English subtitles (default)
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WARNING: Film contains adult language and situations (Rated PG13 by MPAA)
Synopsis:
Master Taiwanese director Edward Yang spins this intricate and complex yarn about life's everyday crises. The film focuses on N.J. Jian (Wu Nien-Jen); his wife, Min-Min (Elaine Jin); and their two children, teenager Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee) and young Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang). Their middle-class existence seems stable and secure until a series of incidents throws all of their lives out of kilter. The misfortunes start at the wedding of Min-Min's ne'er-do-well brother, Ah-Di (Chen Xisheng), when his jilted ex-girlfriend Yun-Yun (Tseng Hsin-yi) bursts into the proceedings and lambastes the bride. Upset by the ruckus and feeling unwell, Min-Min's mother goes home early only to suffer a stroke and slip into a coma. After the wedding, N.J. runs into his first love, Sherry (Ke Suyun), who is married to a rich American. This chance encounter shakes N.J. to his very foundations, forcing him to reevaluate his life. At the same time, N.J.'s computer company deliberates on whether or not to collaborate with a renowned Japanese game designer, Ota (Issey Ogata), sending N.J. to Japan to negotiate a contract. Confronted by her mother's coma, Min-Min also takes stock of her life and finds it lacking. On the brink of a nervous breakdown, she suddenly joins a religious retreat. In Japan, N.J. warms to his potential business partner Ota, spending long evenings discussing life and love in hip Tokyo jazz clubs. There, N.J. also meets up with Sherry; they relive old memories and flirt with infidelity. At the same, Ting-Ting, who quietly blames herself for her grandmother's coma, learns her first hard lessons about love, while Yang-Yang causes trouble at school and wrestles with the truths of the adult world.
Review:
Edward Yang can combine a poet's eye for metaphor and imagery with a novelist's sense of detail and character. Yi Yi is a domestic drama that has the sweep of an epic and the fine acuity of a haiku. Yang's story unfolds effortlessly, populated with disquieting coincidences and sudden reversals, capturing the ebb and flow of real life. What Yang shows us in his latest film is what his many characters don't seem able to see for themselves: that despite their connections to each other, by blood or acquaintance, their isolation remains profound. (The Chinese title, literally translated, is "One-one," meaning "individually.") Part of the thrill of watching Yi Yi's brisk three hours--which include a wedding, a birth, an attempted suicide, a murder, and a funeral--comes in discovering how the members of this extended family fit together. Discovering how they don't is what gives the film its tragic dimension. Unspooling intertwined strands of a single yarn, Yang allows us to observe, for example, that the father and daughter are both in the throes of first love, but because they never inquire into the details of each other's lives, that revelation is left to each of us alone. In the final scene, one character's deeply felt confession would seem a measure of progress for the film's dysfunctional family; unfortunately, it comes too late for the intended listener to hear.
One of the defining visual elements of Yi yi is its reduced palette; not in some overarching way where only five colors are used in the entire movie or anything like that, but in a scene-by-scene and even shot-by-shot way. Basically, each scene in the film is reduced to three or four colors, with reds and yellows much predominating. The important thing, however, is not which colors overwhelm the film but which colors are used in tiny ways that draw the maximum attention to themselves. The color scheme is used, in other words, to emphasize the locations in the film and the humans in the film, particularly in how those two elements do not combine smoothly.
In its most reduced form, the story of Yi Yi is about how idealism - particularly idealised memories and idealised concepts of how the world should fit together - don't necessarily fit in a world full of well-meaning but messy human actions. The use of color is a major component of how that theme is explored. Most of the film is bathed in soft yellowness, I mentioned, and that calls to mind vintage photographs, an old album where only nice things are recorded and families always seem to be untroubled and happy. The reality is never that simple, of course, and the film is a study of how one family learns that being human is a bit messier than lovely snapshots and nostalgic glow.
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Yi Yi: A One And A Two part 14by alchemistkx1,888 views
Very beautiful scenes and touching thoughts here. Wonderful.
xensboy1 3 months ago