A Brighter Summer Day Review- By Michael Carlisle

Title: A Brighter Summer Day
Director: Edward Yang
Year: 1991
Country: Taiwan
Language: Mandarin 

Brilliant but incredibly long for my first Taiwanese film. I started watching it in one sitting but realized I had to watch it in parts because I kept getting distracted. Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day is definitely epic in scope, but not in scale. It is not an epic in the traditional American sense of what an "epic" film should be. Amazingly, Yang's ingenious portrait of Taiwan and Taiwanese life is so detailed that this films seems much shorter than it actually is. When watching this film you will be so engaged with the characters that you wont even think to look at the clock.

A Brighter Summer Day is set in the 1960's during a single Taipei School year. It shows a country that is still greatly imbalanced by the disruption of the Chinese Nationalists who were led by the  oppressive Chiang Kai-shek in 1948. It is a film distraught between communism, democracy, nationalism and democracy. The characters are full of confusion and alienation with the ever changing world around them. You may need to read up on some Taiwanese history before you watch this film.

As dark as the film may seem, Edward Yang blends the right amount of humor and humanity within the film to make it feel like it's not just about drudgery and impending doom. It is a slow-moving film which shows that the Director has great patience with his shots and the rhythm of his film. Watching this is like watching an orchestra play. Each character's timing & tone is absolutely perfect for every scene they are in. I also admire his indifference to close-up shots, he prefers slower long shots which I feel capture the emotions within his scenes better.

The emotion, plot points and execution of the film seems much like a great novel. It is incredibly sophisticated the way Yang makes his film about more than his characters but about paces and events and Taiwan entire. It all fits together perfectly in an almost flawless way. Though it's what you should expect when a Director spends four years working on just the per-production phase of his work. The search for the identity is Universal and therefore anybody from any culture can relate to these characters.

In conclusion, A Brighter Summer Day is the pinnacle of Taiwanese New Wave. Definitely one of the greatest film to come out of the 90's, let alone the entire twentieth Century. It is quite long, but worth the watch. It will also likely help yo better understand the Taiwanese people and you may probably make more friends because of that. If this is your first film from Taiwan do recommend reading some history and watching this in parts. Either way it will completely blow you away.Praise it! 5/5