A Brighter Summer Day (1991)

[malakaheso]

Originally Posted by DVD Phreak

But even the shocking finale is filmed fairly subduely, with long shots galore, dispassionate onlookers, and an overall sense of that the world just doesn't care nor understand.

It is supposed to be a 'realist' film yet people react indifferently to the killing itself, including the victim? Is it a realist film or not? Because that is not 'realistic', it is closer to a mannered symbolic device, and that gets to the heart of the problem I have with the style of the film. That mix is difficult to pull off and I don't think Yang succeeded.

Originally Posted by DVD Phreak

You need to be more open-minded than this, and accept that any style of filmmaking CAN be used for any subject. What Yang did was just a choice, and we need to evaluate HOW he did it this way instead of whether he should do it this way.

You have not presented a case for the how. The onus is on you--since we don't understand apparently--not on us. I have considered the style and felt it was unecessary for such a simplistic subject, especially over 4 hours.

Artists don't always make the right choices, even the great ones, and it isn't like Yang is an all time top 10 or 20 great. He is not infallible.

Originally Posted by DVD Phreak

Sometimes, films about another culture need to be understood "from within". It is often the western viewers' conceit that any film made about a supposedly exotic culture *should* be presented in manners "identifiable" to them, but it doesn't have to be that way. We only get that impression because these films are more "marketable" to the West, thus more likely to be seen in the West. But we need to be a bit more altruistic about this: when a foreign film has things we don't understand, it may be because we are *not supposed* to understand, and we need to learn more about that culture first before we can understand the film fully.

This sounds like a dodge mixed with a bit of condescension. I've read plenty of interviews with Yang and reviews of the film. I even listened to most of the commentary track. How much 'work' is sufficient to 'get' this film? Should I learn Mandarin as well as Shanghainese just to appreciate this great masterwork? How much do you think the average Western critic praising this to high heaven really knows about Taiwanese history?

There are probably just as many, if not more, Westerners praising these type of films for exotic reasons as there are dismissing it for the reasons you outlined above.