Yi Yi
Move over Grave of the Fireflies, there’s a new tearjerker in town and he’s not fucking around.
“Moved” isn’t strong enough of a word to describe how I felt after Yi Yi, there isn’t a word in the English language that describes how I felt after Yi Yi. This is hands down the most affecting and personal movie I’ve seen in my life.
For the sake of brevity I won’t spill out my life story in this review but this movie spoke to me in such a personal way that nothing else has. But you don’t need to experience anything crazy to be affected by Yi Yi, and that’s the beauty of it.
The criteria to enjoy Yi Yi are the following:
Do you have a soul?
Do you have a beating heart?
Have you ever been born?
If you answered yes to the aforementioned questions you or a loved one are entitled to sob like an infant in your basement at 11:15pm.
It’s been said a billion and a half times already but I’ll say it again, Yi Yi isn’t about life, it is life. From birth to death everything is covered in this movie. Young love, naivety, disillusionment, aging, death, birth, trauma, wonder, how something can cover so much is beyond me.
As the audience you observe life. Not one life, not a multitude of lives, but life as a whole. The use of windows, the lack of closeups, the stillness of the shots, the camera isn’t a tool here, it’s a bridge to humanity.
I’m simply at a loss for words (ironic considering the length of this review). Yi Yi is an example of why cinema is the most affecting art form. The final few scenes are so... I don’t know what to say. I experienced something similar to this after I saw Soul, albeit, to a much smaller extent. Yi Yi doesn’t make you want to jump for joy, or cry of sadness, or quiver in fear, Yi Yi makes you want to stand up and realize the true beauty of life, and that’s something special.
P.S. the academy Award for greatest thing in a movie, ever, goes to Yang Yang, congratulations.