Yi Yi

*"I close my eyes, * the world I see is so beautiful." Yi Yi translates to – as Yang intended – "one-one" meaning "individually" in Chinese. Representing the individual trails of life that are seen through the different stages in life of Yang's calculated ensemble of a cast, from birth to death "a one and a two and a..." is what's always going to be uttered by Jazz artists before they commence their performance. The English title of this film – 'A one and a two...' – comes from this, signifying that what's following the title is an initiation – the question of life, the whole experience of it – as a salacious chord of music. Silence overflows the camerawork, and many still scenes of Yang's masterful introduction to the 21st century. It does not comfort – but interrupts the progress of conversation, the way in which humans deal with the uncertainties of their lives around them. Stopping characters in their moments, isolating them with unanswered questions that will remain so. Each person in Yi Yi is forced to confront these questions in these inescapable moments of solitude, unable to say what needs to be said only until crisis overflows, forced to listen to the haunting echoes inside of them. What Yi Yi suggests – gently, lovingly – is that the 'truth' of life lies within connection. Not in concrete answers, but in the questions asked out loud. In someone being there to hear us. In the need to share the void-filled questions that permeates the silence within an individual – all that needs to happen is conversation, someone to listen, someone to soak up the blankness that prevents our lives from being wholly complete. In this way, Yi Yi hopes to serve not as a film, but as a sponge to soak up this missing-half, completing our own open thoughts. "We can't see what's behind us,"Edward Yang presents a world where the most profound truths are quietly obscured – not hidden with malicious-intent, just beyond a certain grasp. A young boy, Yang-Yang realizes that life remains incomplete and jagged because one can only live with small fragments of truth – not being able to witness the entirety of the world around them; not having eyes on the back of their head, not being able to see what's behind them as they look ahead. The recurring shots from behind the characters' heads, each one emphasizing the unknowable interiority of the people we love – the quiet suffering, and complexity that we can never totally comprehend. This isn't a film about dramatic events. It's about us, and how life happens around us while we focus on what's already finished. The first blush of love, the regret of missed chances, the silence of being left behind, the desire to understand. All these planes of existence are similar, as seen through Taipei's skyline – a sea of grids, and offices all identical, but knowingly separate – everyone exists in their own plane of consciousness. Everyone acts spatially, impulsively in Yi Yi because everyone is alone – searching. Each life is a thread – and Yang gently weaves these wandering strands into a fabric of quiet, aching humanity. Yi Yi is an introduction to the 21st Century and the persistent feelings of a growing society – existing on a whole other degree.