That Day, on the Beach (1983)

Senin, 02 Juli 2007

That Day, on the Beach (1983)

That Day, on the Beach (Edward Yang, 1983)
Mandarin Title: Haitan de yitian

There's an impressive sequence in Edward Yang's debut feature That Day, on the Beach wherein we see Jia-li (Sylvia Chang), who is trapped in an unhappy marriage, stuck in an elevator with another woman. The woman, dressed in fiery red compared to her dull black, is the paramour of her husband De-wei (David Mao). The scene is tightly shot: Jia-Li is seen in the foreground and through the elevator's mirror, we see the paramour. The motionless scene is followed by their confrontation: the husband, who is abroad for business reasons, has switched their letters and the paramour is returning the letter to her while revealing her secret love affair with Jia-Li's husband. The confrontation retains the quaint and relaxed atmosphere. You can tell that the sequence is simmering with repressed emotions but nothing is ever let out. Life continues on, in a constant state of melancholy.

That's basically Yang's theme right there. He fills the movie with these quiet moments, dictating these moments with the clarity and importance of a historical event but none of the overstated dramatics. It is told with straightforward relevance by Jia-Li to her brother's ex-girlfriend (Teresa Hu) years after their last meeting. Yang's film is told through a series of flashbacks all relating to the titular incident in the beach wherein Jia-Li's husband was supposedly drowned to death. The body cannot be located, nor are they sure that the victim was indeed Jia-Li's husband but it is the moment wherein Jia-Li is gripped by a more palpable sense of uncertainty. All her life, she is dragged by the circumstances paved for her but at that exact moment, she's suddenly in a centerpoint in her adult life.

That Day, on the Beach is credited as the starting point of the Taiwanese New Wave and the career of Yang (it is also the first work of Christopher Doyle as cinematographer). It is easily representative of the distinct sensibilities of his nation's contemporary cinema (as continued by Yang himself, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and to a certain degree, Tsai Ming-liang). The film evokes a fathomable ache that inhabits the newly wealthy middle-class of Taipei: the way a lucrative job turns a lovely marriage into an essentially empty and torturous predicament. The film details the effects of the new-found commercialism the economic boom has provided: how designer clothes or sleeping pills are supposed to ease the lack of love in a marital relationship.

Yet above the subtle societal backdrop that Yang points out in the film, it is the empathetically portrayed story of Jia-Li that draws the most interest. Yang clearly understands Jia-Li's predisposition and dilemma. There are flashbacks within the flashbacks that show Jia-Li as a young girl and how she witnesses her mother's subdued nature against her father's sexual trysts. That quiet conversation with her brother just before she escapes from an arranged wedding conjures illusions of a promising future; yet the seduction of a free life does not deliver its supposed promises as Jia-Li furthers lower in the quagmire of shallow living.

But Yang does not dwell in melancholy (although he depicts melancholy so effectively). His interest is humanity's capacity to change which is the reason why Jia-Li's story is told in past tense rather than as a continuing experience. He understands the value of the past (how Jia-Li's decisions since she was a little girl has shaped who she is) but maintains an uncertain but more optimistic stance for the future. He reveals the scars of Jia-Li's life but assures that these wounds are either closed or closing. His confrontations are quiet, painful, and deep but in a way, they are relevant and important in letting go.

Jia-Li would conclude her tale with the death of her brother, wherein he leaves the world with a few acerbic messages on how he has led his life following his father's steps from the profession he chose to the girl he marries. It is an essential end to the never-ending questions that haunted the incomplete soul of the girl that character has abandoned for his decision to be perpetually dictated. It seals that undefinable what-if in the pianist's past, and sufficiently closes that chapter of Jia-Li's life wherein she has been subdued by the men in her life.

The act of communication and revelation releases both female characters from being imprisoned by their respective pasts and male tormentors. Yang plays doting master to his fractured characters that despite the melancholy of their scenarios, he breathes to them that human ability to heal and move on.

Edward Yang died at an early age of 59 leaving the world with films that depicted reality with brutal honesty but with tender humanism. Previous to That Day, on the Beach, I've only seen his quiet masterpiece Yi Yi (A One and a Two, 2000), a film that is so rich with nuances that it took me more than one viewing to at least appreciate his sage-like interpretation of several generations of life blossoming in slow and almost painful grandeur. His death has caused a wave of mournful odes from cinephiles worldwide. I cannot think of a greater way to mourn his sudden passing than to celebrate the feature film that began his illustrious career.

Nostalghia (1983)

Selasa, 19 Juni 2007

Nostalghia (1983)

Nostalghia (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983)

Removed from his native Russia, Andrei Tarkovsky creates his penultimate film Nostalghia in Italy. Not surprisingly, the film echoes Tarkovsky's longing for his homeland, shown in the beginning as a scene captured from inside a structure through a glassy window pane in sepia tones. These sepia-toned sequences are interspersed throughout the feature, presumably detailing a fading sense of home --- no longer distinct memories but mere emotions, nostalgia. The length of time away from Russia, the overpowering cultural influences of Italy --- all these turn images of home into murky and amorphous visualizations of the Russian countryside which is very distinct from the geometric precision of Italy's vistas, with its grandiose cathedrals and architectural structures.

Tarkovsky lays out the film in simplistic fashion. There are no narrative nuances or dramatic arcs that forward the plot. It seems that his cinema breathes from the gorgeous tableaus he creates and the evocative lingering of his camera that slowly reveals emotional lines in the faces or the quiet gestures that were previously hidden. It is dense with spiritual and thematic weight; and it feels like Tarkovsky can talk about so many things simultaneously using his infallible imagery and symbolisms. Ever-present are his persistent representations of rain, of fire, of birds and dogs, and his troubled male protagonist with an aching desire of profound nature. We can barely scrape the surface of Tarkovsky's art yet even with the meager and incomplete appreciation of Tarkovsky's masterpiece, hungers are satisfied.

Andrei (Oleg Yankovsky) is a poet who is traveling through Italy to retrace the life of Sosnovsky, a composer who became famous in Italy but decided to repatriate to become a serf in his country. His only companion is Eugenia (Domiziana Giordano), his translator. Tarkovsky initiates the film in a barren field wherein a car drives past the frame, only to reveal in the foreground. Eugenia appears and invites Andrei to see a famous painting of the Madonna; the latter refuses the offer saying that he is tired of seeing all these beautiful things. The sequence inside the chapel gives us a quiet glimpse of Eugenia's character. Formidably juxtaposed with the pious women and the the idolized Mary, she questions an old man why it is mostly women who pray in the chapel. The old man declares his simplicity and proclaims the duties of women as mothers. Before leaving the chapel, she witnesses a little miracle, of Mary's statue opening up to reveal dozens of birds in flight.

A subtle romance can be observed between Andrei and Eugenia. In their hotel's lobby, they discuss of poetry and music. Andrei nonchalantly challenges Eugenia's admiration for Arseni Tarkovsky's poetry which according to him cannot be appreciated in its translated form; he goes on proclaiming that national barriers should be removed. Andrei is reluctant and obviously separated from the world. His knowledge of Italian is enough but insists on using a translator to converse with people, until he meets Domenico (Erland Josephson), the town's madman who is reported to have trapped his family in his home in order to save them from the apocalypse. His need for Eugenia no longer persists and Eugenia can no longer stand the man Andrei is becoming --- closer to the laughing stock Domenico is, with his amazement with the vagueness of religion and faith.

In a scene wherein Eugenia confronts Andrei, she reveals her breast, taunting Andrei to admit that that is all he wants in her. Although extrinsically, the confrontation connotes a sexual linkage between the two individuals, a more apt interpretation can be given. Looking back, we witness Eugenia's reluctance to appreciate motherhood as a woman's primary aspect. Upon defeat by Domenico, she reluctantly compromises and offers just exactly that, a breast, the symbol for motherhood.

Domenico then requests Andrei to complete his mission: to cross the sulfuric baths with a lighted candle. Away from Eugenia, Andrei succumbs to soulsearching --- images of Russia are slowly intermixed with that of Rome, both in sepia, presumably both forming a part of Andrei's spiritual ache. Little bits and pieces of his homeland appear --- the gorgeously lighted greens of Russia take centerstage in Domenico's unkempt lair, murky mossy puddle water floods a ruined church, Domenico's dog is also very prominent in Andrei's own dreams. It is during these moments that Andrei feels most human, most susceptible to contact.

The film ends the same way Solaris ends, with an image as haunting or uplifting as it is sublime. Andrei sits comfortably in a pastoral landscape --- the same cabin which appears in his murky memories are in the background. Tarkovsky's camera zooms out to reveal a masterful surprise --- the landscape becomes sheltered within the structure of a ruined cathedral. Droplets of rain start pouring and at once, we are confounded with the repercussions of that phantasmagoric last scene. Yet it's not totally out of place as it appears in sepia; not as an imagery as real as his arguments with Eugenia or Domenico's tragic speeches in Rome, it's equal to the feelings of longing, of nostalgia he has for his homeland. It certainly feels that with the last scene, as preceded by his sacrifice (a long take featuring Andrei's fulfillment of Domenico's mission), connotes a satisfaction for his craving to be home, despite being in another land.