The Fractured Storytelling of Edward Yang's The

! 2. TAIWANESE–ITALIAN CONJUGATIONS: THE FRACTURED STORYTELLING OF EDWARD YANG’S THE TERRORIZERS AND MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI’S BLOW-UP ! ! ! ! Frederic Jameson describes Edward Yang’s () films as miniature show- cases for alienation in a modernised Taipei – as spaces in which conventional plots and characters no longer exist – spaces in which linear narrative is replaced with moments of coincidence and points of intersection. Yang also makes explicit use of voiceovers and dialogue to express the ‘heaviness’ of life in modern-day Taipei, unlike other Taiwanese art house directors, such as Tsai Ming-liang. The combination of these factors forms the basis of Yang’s style: though he does film space unconventionally, as Jameson suggests, he also relies heavily on dialogue or ‘words’ more generally. My analysis of Yang’s films within this chapter, therefore, relies on a careful consideration of both these aspects: camera movement and dialogue. I also analyse a case study for com- parative purposes, in response to questions such as: why Yang is so frequently compared with Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni? Is there any validity to this comparison? Premised on the assumption that Yang is a ‘universal’ film-maker, I argue that Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up and Yang’s Terrorizers contain overlapping themes and plot devices to such an extent that they can be considered analogies for modernism more generally. I return to these connections shortly. We must first go back to the early 1980s to see how Yang entered the scene. Yang was talented but he was also lucky. In 1982, four directors were chosen by Taiwan’s Central Motion Picture Corporation to contribute to a special anthology of short films, entitled In Our Time, which were supposed to rep- resent everyday stories of Taiwan from the 1950s to the 1970s. The resulting ! 47 ! WILSON TAIWANESE 9780748640041 PRINT.indd 47 27/11/2013 16:31 ! ! ! ! new taiwanese cinema in focus ! anthology contained the films of four young directors: Chang Yi, Ko I-chen, Tao Te-chen, and Edward Yang. Yang’s short film, entitled ‘Expectations’ (also translated as ‘Desires’), tells the story of a young girl, entering puberty, who discovers her sexuality while lusting after her handsome college-age neighbour. In one particularly noteworthy scene, the young teenage girl, Fen, discovers that she has her period for the first time. Though one might expect such a scene to be dramatic, on the contrary, the scene is extremely low key and contemplative. Film scholar Edmond Wong, in his book on Yang (Edward Yang, 1993), notes that this scene from ‘Expectations’ exemplifies the central difference in style between Yang and more traditional directors. With reference to the scene in which Fen makes her ‘discovery’, Wong comments: ‘different from other directors, Yang moved the camera slowly to record the sudden inci- dent and showed a gentle care for [Fen] the protagonist’ (Wong). Instead of an overreliance on melodrama or character expression, in other words, Yang relies on the juxtaposition of images to create emotion. This reli- ance on mundane objects in the world – a breeze blowing through curtains, a pipe dripping water into a puddle – separates Yang from his mainstream counterparts who might choose instead to rely on reaction shots. From the very beginning then, Yang showcased his ability to mask commentary of larger social trends, in an era of extreme social change in Taiwan, in the telling of individual stories. Unlike his colleague and contemporary, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Yang was known for his serious, wise demeanour and, occasionally, for his temper tantrums. Unlike Hou, however, Yang was neither frank nor blunt. Yang’s goal overall, as a film-maker, was to create realistic, believable characters. An added benefit, perhaps, was that the lives of these characters came across as emblematic of the class struggles associated with modernisation in 1980s-era Taipei. ! ! Birth of a Movement Yang was born in Shanghai in 1947 but grew up in Taipei after his family moved to Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War. Though he was interested in drawing and architecture while growing up, his father discouraged him from following a ‘creative path’. Thus, in an effort to please his father, Yang attended university in Taiwan and specialised in electrical engineering. In the early 1970s, however, Yang left Taiwan and moved to Florida where he completed a master’s programme in computer design. After the master’s programme, Yang moved to Los Angeles where he attended film school at the University of Southern California. He dropped out after only a year. For the six to seven years after that, between about 1974 and 1980, Yang lived and worked in Seattle as a software designer. But Yang felt unsatisfied with his life and with his job during these years despite the fact that he had spent much of ! 48 ! WILSON TAIWANESE 9780748640041 PRINT.indd 48 27/11/2013 16:31 ! ! ! taiwanese–italian conjugations ! his life being educated and trained to work with computers. ‘By the time I was thirty, I felt so old’ the director recalled in a 2001 interview with the New Left Review (Anderson 6). He was restless to an unbearable extent. One day, says Yang, as he was walking down the street in Seattle, he noticed that Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) was playing and he bought a ticket to see it. Herzog’s historical fiction film, a masterpiece of mini- malism set in 1560, is about a conquistador (Klaus Kinski) who goes slowly insane in the jungle. The film was shot entirely on location in the Peruvian rainforest, where Herzog and Kinski nearly killed one another.1 Watching the film changed his life, Yang recalled, to such an extent that he convinced himself to leave his job and return to film-making. In 1980, then, Yang returned to Taiwan. Just after his return, he was lucky enough to find work as a scriptwriter and television director for a popular television series. Soon afterwards, the CMPC commissioned Yang to direct ‘Expectations’ for In Our Time (Berry 2005, 273). In Our Time, explains an Economist reporter, was the first government-sponsored effort to showcase the efforts of four native directors. More importantly, it was the first successful effort to introduce the idea of ‘personal cinema’ to Taiwanese audiences (90). The reporter realised the significance of this step for the industry only four years after it had begun. In that same 1986 Economist article, entitled ‘New Wave Brings Realism’, the reporter describes Yang and other New Wave film-makers as rebellious geniuses. Certainly the New Wave directors were rebellious in the sense that they were fed up with current rules and regulations, and they were reacting against an out-of-date, overly commercialised industry. Many of these directors, Yang included, had either lived or studied abroad before returning to Taiwan to make films. The experience of living abroad, then, though by no means a ‘rite of passage’ for Taiwanese New Wave directors, was certainly not a negative. Living abroad offered Yang an invaluable perspective. His experience working for a software company jaded him but it also turned him back towards his creative side. Not everyone was convinced that the movement was important, especially critics in Taiwan. In 1983, a year after In Our Time was released, critics were divided. Many critics did not see that New Wave cinema was a worthwhile trend. Critics in Taiwan either believed in the need for change or they did not. The older generation, dominated by those who had been born in China and remembered the Communist victory in 1949, tended to be reactionary while younger critics were on the side of change. The older generation complained that the New Wave was not real ‘Chinese’ cinema because it was designed to appeal to ‘foreign audiences’. Younger critics, meanwhile, praised the cinematic style of New Wave film-makers because it was fresh, internationally minded and sophisticated. Younger critics in Taiwan, in other words, approved of the fact that New Wave film-makers had been ‘weaned’ on a steady diet of both Asian and international cinema (90). ! 49 ! WILSON TAIWANESE 9780748640041 PRINT.indd 49 27/11/2013 16:31 ! ! ! ! new taiwanese cinema in focus ! International critics heaped praise upon New Wave film-makers, especially Edward Yang. Even in 1986, the journalist for the Economist practically gushes over the New Wave movement and the prospects for its future. Unlike the Hong Kong cinema produced only a few years earlier, notes the reporter, this cinema does not reek of ‘phony internationalism’ – it possesses an authen- tic quality to it. Taiwan, he observes, is aided by its geography. While Hong Kong is landlocked and in close proximity to China, Taiwan’s isolation imbues it with its own cultural values, separate from those of the mainland. The New Wave movement is small, admits the reporter, but the directors and writers ‘pop up’ in one another’s films, offering the viewer an ‘intertextual reward’ for simply being a fan. The New Wave movement, moreover, offers the viewer a genuine sense of the collaboration that takes place behind the scenes. Nevertheless, even in 1986, critics were aware of the potential risks associated with cinema that could be deemed ‘too sophisticated’ by the masses. Regardless of the CMPC’s support of the industry overall, local audiences had not fully embraced the movement. Taiwanese audiences still greatly preferred paying to see either American box office successes or lighter domestic enter- tainment (as opposed to art house cinema with weightier messages and longer running times). Though this anti-intellectual sentiment might appear counter- intuitive in many ways, the situation is similar in many other film industries, especially Hollywood.

Load more