Yi Yi

"Daddy, you can't see what I see and I can't see what you see. So how can I know what you see?" I have started to grow a little afraid of longer movies I don't really understand why, however I had to get this off my watchlist. It took me a week to complete this because it was an incredibly hectic week but every night watching just thirty minutes of this was the most relaxing thing of the whole day. Yi Yi is a Taiwanese drama film by Edward Yang centering around the lives of three generations of members of a family in Taipei, Taiwan. To be really honest, I am tired to write a big review but this film deserves all the appreciation it can get. Yang is a genius and this film is a three hour long acknowledgement of that. You know you could pause the film anywhere in its two hour fifty-seven minute runtime and each frame looks like a painting. That's how much beautiful this movie looks. The decision for the cinematography is brilliant - the camera is a voyeur. The juxtaposition of reflective surfaces on every character and the distance they are from the camera and how they get closer and closer directly in front of the camera was pretty poetic. We look at all the candidness of the people - their plans, their pains, their joys from the most unusual of places - outside high apartment buildings, CCTV camera, recordings, windows, hallways, etc. Literally observing them without intervention. It really feels as if you are just a showpiece in their surroundings, observing them and feeling every emotion there is. The color palette is fantastic - especially the reds. The wedding scene is stunning to look at. Gorgeous. The narrative decision to take three generations of the same family so as to show the whole life cycle of a person is the closest one can get to being considered a genius. I really liked how the things are unravelled and how they tie up - we start with a wedding, a new kid born and end with a funeral and a person lost; NJ left Sherry with no information and Sherry leaves NJ without any message; Ting-Ting's arc starts with guilt and ends with acceptance. Oh and Yang-Yang's adventures. Delightful. Despite Edward Yang's claims that the film isn't deeply philosophical, there is no way one doesn't complete it and isn't immersed in thoughts. A simple task of talking to their comatose grandmother leads to them reflecting on their own self-absorbed lives, looking back at repressed emotions, roads not taken, paths not chosen, decisions not made, guilt, etc. NJ realizes that his job doesn't make him happy - they are just a superficial money-grab front; a sharp critique at modern day urban lifestyle. The family's life draws a lot of parallels with each other- showing how cyclic life actually is; Ting-Ting facing a new love meanwhile NJ with an old one --- Yang-Yang's curiosity is a reflection of the passion NJ had for something that he didn't pursue --- Min-Min's spiritual and existential clash similar to that of Ting-Ting's. The film basically shows the beauty in the mundane and a camera that observes characters that do nothing cinematic - dignifying their internal lives, creating a bit of poetic realism. I wish Ota and NJ did something together. Their chemistry was great. And yes this is a must watch. A break from all the thrills and dramatics of life and a relaxing watch. A masterpiece in its entirety.