Yi Yi

I need to see it again to get a more complete look at it, but there’s no doubting that this is a remarkable and absolutely singular piece of cinema. Hilarious, heartbreaking, and carrying itself with a quiet, soulful immensity that makes grand the struggles of every individual piece of human life. Suggests not that the characters in Yi Yi are all of us, but that we are all the characters in Yi Yi. Hovering in the glimpses given to mirrors, the aspects of us that our neighbors overhear, the story that someone can construct from the back of your head. Seeing your mother cry, your granddaughter fear the world, the person you used to call the love of your life roaming a cleared-out hotel. The parts that make sense. A tour de force of the human spirit and the lives it gives us.