YI YI
by Chris Dashiell

Just as a big novel, by allowing us to live with its characters long enough to know them on deeper levels, can achieve effects that are out of reach for a story or shorter novel - so a long film, in the right hands, can do the same. The close to three-hour length of Edward Yang's Yi Yi, with its numerous characters experiencing a wide range of events, mundane and extraordinary, succeeds in attaining this rich novelistic sense of having lived through many things together, and in the end feeling wiser and even kinder for it.

NJ (Wu Nienjen) is the wiry, pensive patriarch of a middle-class family in Taiwan. The film opens with the wedding of his brother-in-law, a grandiose young man who still needs to grow up. His mother-in-law suffers a stroke the same night and goes into a coma. She stays on life-support at NJ's house, and the doctor encourages the family to keep talking to her. NJ's wife Min-Min (Elaine Jin), while trying to do so, is overwhelmed by a sense of the banality of her life and runs off to a retreat with her spiritual group.
Teenage daughter Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee) can't sleep because she feels she may have been responsible for her grandmother's stroke.Her friendship with the girl next door, and the girl's boyfriend, brings up all the anxious yearnings and disappointments of adolescence. Eight-year-old Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang) refuses to speak to grandma. He is bullied by older girls, and a tyrannical teacher, at school - his quietness conceals a curious philosophical bent that helps him cope. NJ himself has a chance encounter with his first love, which gives him an opportunity to revisit his past and wonder about decisions made long ago.

Perhaps it will give you an idea of the complexity of this film to say that the above summary is only a sketch which omits mention of several other characters and plot strands. Yang holds it all together, not by manic cross-cutting but by patient, gentle observation of daily rituals and interactions. The dramatic moments have impact because the ordinary ones have gradually accustomed us to this family and the different personalities in it.

The film often provides a discreet distance from its world, with shots through doorways, windows, in hallways, or at oblique angles to the action, as if to emphasize the tentative nature of any insights we may gain about others. Yang doesn't use very many close-ups. The reliance on medium and long shots accents the relationships of the characters to others and to their surroundings. Some of the picture's most striking effects are achieved through this method - as in, for example, a woman sobbing in a hotel room where we only see her faintly in the reflection of a window against the night skyline of the city. Yang's technique is like a painter creating a picture through hundreds of tiny strokes rather than a few bold ones.

Yi Yi treats different age groups with equal care and respect. NJ's mid-life sense of melancholy and regret is presented with subtlety and sophistication, while Ting-Ting's point of view has all her vulnerability and naivete. Yang-Yang, the youngest character, acts in a sense as the equalizer of the film's conflicting voices. The attitude of a child, less complicated but more open and adventurous, puts everything else into perspective. The acting is almost uniformly marvelous, with Nienjen foremost, and the precocious Chang a delight to watch.

The cumulative effect of the film's method, the patient accretion of detail, the emotional honesty, is moving and heartbreaking and somehow invigorating as well. Even when it falters a bit (there's a touch of melodrama near the end that seemed unnecessary to me)
it doesn't spoil the feeling of wholeness. Yi Yi communicates a sense of life observed, where nothing much happens and everything has a meaning for those who wish to see.

The title means "One One," in the sense of each one, one at a time. The family, the world, is actually each individual living a life in the world - each one learning his or her own lessons, each one deserving of honor and love, no matter what mistakes they might make. (The double names of NJ's wife and children seem to play humorously with the title's sense of singleness/doubleness.) Events do happen in this world - birth and marriage and death are the big ones, and there are of course many smaller ones - yet the real drama is inside, the search for love, purpose, meaning. At one point a character asks, "Why is life so different than what we thought?" The film's spirit is such that this question does not indicate any bitterness or protest, but a recognition - with the multitude of feelings it evokes - of the way things are.

When writing about movies, I sometimes (more often than I would like) feel the need to use the word "overrated." But I have noticed over the years that this word can carry more sting than I might intend. So I would like to clarify. "Overrated" is not the same thing as "bad." In fact, it is a rare occasion on which I would use those two terms to refer to the same film. (I'll take this oppurtunity to label that rare occasion the "Gump occurrence.") "Overrated" simply means, that in the opinion of the writer, the film in question has received more critical and/or popular acclaim than it deserves. It may even be a rather good film (American Beauty and Sling Blade come immediately to mind) or an empty-headed film with compensating entertainment qualities (such as Shakespeare in Love or Titanic). The point is that the writer feels a significant discordance between the abundant popularity or loudly accorded praise of a movie, and the writer's own reaction to it.

Some will object that this word unfairly takes the reactions of others to a film into account, when all the writer should be doing is judging a film on its own terms. There is no denying that the word refers to something outside of the film. I think the question of its appropriateness depends on how you view the role of the critic. If the writer in question is just a reviewer who presents a piece, as the writers for newspapers do, in order to let the reader know what it's about and then recommend it (or not) in varying degrees or stars or thumbs up/down etc, then I would have to agree that the term has no place. But I think that part of the vocation of a film critic is to evaluate film culture as a whole, the state of the art, the industry, and even of criticism itself. The critic feels an unavoidable need (and, in my opinion, a duty) to voice dissent when a film that he or she likes is widely attacked - and by the same token when he or she believes that a film is being lauded beyond its desert.

The second need may seem less imperative than the first, but there are factors which can make it even more vital for the critic to dissent, even if the film in question is not bad. One of these factors today is that the craft of film is ignored by the majority of film reviewers, and to a great degree not understood by the public. We should accept the public's indifference, but not the ignorance of the reviewers. If a writer doesn't comprehend the formal possibility of the medium, this flattens everything out so that the most lackluster work is judged as comparable to great work, merely because the writer liked the story. Another factor is that there is an assumed hegemony of American films, and this results in mediocre work being rated highly simply because it has slightly more imagination than escapist studio product. The mindset which puts "foreign language" films in a separate category is inherently prejudiced against a fair-minded evaluation of the films being produced as a whole.

This is not to say that foreign films are somehow automatically superior to American ones. The home markets in other countries produce escapism and middling drama and trash as well, while the ones that make it to the states are generally the "cream of the crop." This is just to say that a critic who has seen Yi Yi or Leila or Not One Less may find it difficult to ignore mountains of praise heaped on American films that have much less style, craft, intelligence, subtlety, dramatic power, or visual acumen, and will in fact feel the overpowering need to use the term "overrated" to express the dissonance that he or she is experiencing.

And that is all, really. I don't enjoy being the critical voice out of harmony with the chorus. I don't like expressing a negative opinion about something that my best friend might think is the best movie of the year. Honestly, I go to every movie hoping to see a really good one, hoping that I can write a glowing review. And I'm careful to go to films that I think I might like, so I end up writing mostly good reviews. (There's an economic factor here, too - who wants to spend $7.50 and not enjoy themselves?) But if the chorus is chanting the name of something I consider less than important, I will call it the way I see it. I have to.

Which brings me to YOU CAN COUNT ON ME, the directing debut of playwright / screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan. It's a modest, low-key drama about orphaned siblings - a sister (Laura Linney) living as a single mom in her little town, visited by her brother (Mark Ruffalo), a drifter who has so far failed at most everything he has tried to do. The sister is uptight and repressed, a lot less self-aware than she thinks, and she tends to be attracted to men who are not good for her. The brother is irresponsible, more open-minded and free-spirited than his sister, but trapped in a kind of endless reaction against the confinement of his upbringing. The film follows these two throughout his visit. There are side stories involving the sister's annoying new boss (Matthew Broderick) and the need for her son (Rory Culkin) to know his father.

Lonergan's direction is so amateurish that it was almost painful for me to watch. His camera placement is unimaginative, the visual texture is dull. Everything is blocky, like a filmed play. The film's musical score mostly consists of someone sawing away loudly on a cello. When Terry (Ruffalo) goes to a cemetery, we hear a Bach aria on the soundtrack.

The picture is being praised for its writing. I honestly don't understand why. To me, this is sort of junior level theater, simplistic, with a paucity of insight about character. The Linney character turns down a proposal from the nice guy in her life, but sleeps with her obnoxious boss. It doesn't really make sense except as a bid by the author to expose, none too subtly, a difference between her views and her actions. This might provide fodder for after-film discussions over coffee, but it doesn't work dramatically.

Most of the dialogue seems clunky and unconvincing to me - once in while it rises to the level of mildly amusing. Maybe this is more than you can get on TV, but it's not great writing. Reviewers seem to just be grateful that the story is more relaxed and less linear than your standard connect-the-dots Hollywood script. I think they are too grateful for too little.

The one saving grace here is Mark Ruffalo. He really is good as the brother, with a special mixture of sensitivity and foolhardiness. The movie picks up when he's onscreen. It doesn't hurt that his role is the most well-written one. Laura Linney does her best as Sammy, the sister with the need for control. Unfortunately the part doesn't give her much to do except tighten her eyes and her mouth and act frustrated.

The movie starts very rocky, but it does get a little better as it goes along. It's not a bad film, really - it's a nice little effort by a first-time director who could use some lessons on how to translate his words into images effectively. But from the reactions of critics, you would think this was some kind of great masterpiece.

At times like these, I start to think there's something wrong with me, like I'm crazy.Then I see something like Yi Yi and I know immediately again what a great movie feels like, looks like.

In my opinion, of course. Happy new year.

 

CineScene, 2000