A Brighter Summer Day

A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY   ***

Edward Yang

1991

IDEA:  In early 1960s Taiwan, a student is caught in the middle of a turf war between two school gangs, one comprised of the kids of Mainland Chinese parents and the other of native Taiwanese. Meanwhile, his family members deal with their own social and political unrests under the country's military regime.

BLURB:  By now, Edward Yang’s four-hour opus is firmly cemented as one of the few true cornerstones of the Taiwanese New Wave. Across its lavish runtime, the film simultaneously evokes a primal, pivotal historical period of unsettled national character and, by virtue of its very existence, a (then) contemporary moment of economic and social efflorescence, albeit one fraught with its own share of political uncertainty. Merging a studied Eastern Asian cinema aesthetic with Hollywood-friendly idioms such as the youth picture and gangster drama, and allegorizing a sort of Taiwanese origin story within a meticulous, panoramic, and vividly tactile recreation of a time and place, Yang created something that would inevitably cast a formidable shadow on his and his compatriots’ subsequent explorations of life within the island nation. Yet, with full acknowledgment of the ambition and craft on display, perhaps it wouldn’t be erroneous to argue that the cultural significance and reputation of A Brighter Summer Day precede - and likely even eclipse - the film itself. For as intricately realized as it is on the levels of mise-en-scène and ensemble performance, the film is rather dramatically shapeless. A spectacular mid-narrative crescendo notwithstanding, Yang meanders fairly listlessly between scenes of domestic discontent and schoolyard angst, delivering individually impactful vignettes of disaffection, fraternity, and conflict that are not always ideally served by the baggy framework they float within. It’s as if the length of A Brighter Summer Day is intended to inform its scope and magnitude, rather than the other way around. Certainly, it’s fair to point out the faults of even the most venerable of cinematic leviathans; it would also be fair to excuse them in the face of such an admittedly expansive, historically resonant vision.