A Brighter Summer Day (1991)

Precisely two hours into this four-hour historical drama, we see an exchange between two children at school.  One of them is Xiao Si'r, the film’s main character and a member of a gang of delinquent teens.  The other is Ming, a girl who used to be in a relationship with Honey, the leader of Si'r's gang.  

Honey is absent for most of the film, having skipped town and gone into hiding after killing a member of a rival gang.  Honey and S'ir's gang is for children of families who immigrated to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War.  The rival gang is for children of native Taiwanese.   

As Si'r and Ming talk, the camera remains at a distance from them, but we can hear their voices as if they were close.  In the background, we can hear the school’s marching band practicing.  It’s loud enough that it would certainly drown out Si'r and Ming’s voices if they weren’t amplified for us.  Ming recounts to Si'r how alone she felt during the days she was bedridden with illness after Honey went into hiding.  After sustaining the shot of them standing under an archway together for a full minute, the film cuts as Ming turns to walk away from Si'r.

We then see Ming head-on, walking down a corridor, and we can see Si'r out of focus behind her, running toward her and eventually coming into focus.  They pass by the marching band.  Now they and the band are close to us, and Si'r has to shout for his voice to be audible.  He insists that Ming isn’t alone because he’s there for her.  Just as he finishes his sentence, the band stops playing.  The volume of his voice drops on his very last syllable, as if he had suddenly become self-conscious when the noise dropped and he could hear himself shouting.  His next sentence is short, and almost whispered.  Ming doesn't care to hear it.

This is a turning point, and a moment of clarity about the contrary feelings of longing and discomfort the film evokes throughout.  Private spheres bump into each other and start to overlap.  Some would like to break out but don't know where they would land.  This is a moment when Si'r tries to step up and resolve the tensions, but uncertainty remains.

He drifts from one world to another.  He starts as a student at a school where he repeatedly finds himself standing before indifferent disciplinarians, and becomes a gangster.  As for the gangs, we come to understand their links to the film's locales, and how their internal dynamics resemble the dubious social networking Si'r's father finds himself having to do to secure financial stability for their family.  There's a pool hall run by the native Taiwanese gang where people come to gamble when they're running low on cash.  There's an ice cream parlor that the mainlander gang uses as a meeting spot, and a concert hall owned by one member's family.  One character, a well-dressed young adult nicknamed "Threads," attempts to mediate a deal between the two gangs, and hosts a peace meeting in a movie theater.

Though most of the characters are schoolchildren, they're already starting after money, work, status, and relationships.  That's just how rare lucrative options are in this film's setting, and the secret police might come for you if you hang out with the wrong people.  Meanwhile, Si'r’s father’s efforts to secure a good education for his son take place in the dark.  In one scene, he discusses an under-the-table deal with an acquaintance.  They stand in a dark room, and through a doorframe in the background, we can see a family gathering play out in the light.

One of the most prevalent visual motifs in the film is darkness altered by variable light.  A door opens, allowing light from streetlamps into an empty building at night.  Si'r switches lights on and off, testing his eyesight.  We watch from outside as Ming runs through a house, turning on the lights in each room she passes through.  In one disorienting instance, the camera points toward one character before the power goes out.  The next thing we see is another character striking a match to light candles, the camera having moved while the room was pitch black.  The very first shot of the film is an unidentified hand switching on a lightbulb in an abstract space. 

Si'r carries a stolen flashlight with him for most of the film.  It looks too big for him, an unwieldy hunk of metal pushing his clothes out of the way when he shoves it under his belt.  He chronically hesitates to act.  What he mainly does for most of the film is observe.  In one scene, he joins his gang on a lethal raid.  He goes knife in one hand, flashlight in the other, but all he ultimately does is shine his light.  He shares in the struggle of illuminating the dark, but never with the proactivity other characters display, never sure of what to do when the lights are on.  The detached nature of his observing is highlighted by where he stole the flashlight from: a film set where he hides in the rafters and watches the behind-the-scenes conflict between director and actor as if it itself were a movie.  He certainly likes movies.  He and his friends go to see Rio Bravo in a theater.  Later, he dons a cowboy hat and fantasizes about being a gunslinger in a reference to The Searchers.  

Fantasies of honorable violence blend into reality when these kids are essentially part of the local government.  The members of his gang find old Japanese swords hidden in their houses, remnants of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. They're fascinated with what these weapons represent, and eventually they go into real use.

Si'r does become less passive over the course of the film, but this is not obviously for the better.  He begins to pick up on the gang's rules of disrespect and retaliation, mixing them with his father's principled, but foolhardy, stands against the school authorities.  When he becomes less passive he becomes more vengeful. 

While Si'r is undoubtedly the main character, the film spends ample time on others.  One of the most significant is Sly, a delinquent who makes a stumbling attempt to assert control of the mainlander gang in Honey's absence.  Another is Ma, the son of a wealthy and influential family who tends to coast above the gang conflicts.  These characters contrast with Si'r, with Sly living a similar life but making greater efforts to establish himself, and Ma having a similar detachment but being insulated from conflict.  They throw Si'r's life into greater relief, with respect both to his circumstances and to the kind of person he is.

The film shifts between images of great intimacy and images where your eyes could wander all over the screen and find many things to latch onto.  The aforementioned shot of S'ir and Ming standing together under the archway is both at the same time.  

In Yang's 2000 film Yi Yi, one character asserts that films are important because they let you live three lifetimes.  But this character, we later learn, is not trustworthy.  Si'r, in his detached observation, sets out on a similar path in A Brighter Summer Day.  Like other characters, he draws symbolic objects and people into his clumsy fabrication of a sense of self.  Unlike them, he shies away from a practical or creative element.  On one hand, we understand that uncertainty and regret that fill this film like a miasma, but on the other hand, we see plenty of people who live right alongside S'ir and respond differently.

But there are also some scenes where the characters simply act like the children they are.  Ming, in particular, seems to enjoy these moments.  She withdraws from ambitious proclamations and the gangland turmoil.  She does this even though she has possibly the most disillusioned, pragmatic outlook of all the characters.  The film's most crushing irony is that this is why she gives us the film's most pronounced moments of what it's like to just be a kid.

The original version of this review has posted here.  The version that appears here is almost entirely different, however.