A Brighter Summer Day (1991), Edward Yang

 

Predecessor to 'Yi Yi', Edward Yang's culturally influenced drama is a densely packed metaphorical piece with a blend of intrinsic and explanatory elements in itself .

Clarifying it's source of origin which remains to be on a true event of a homicidal case, Yang's ambitious attempt of unfolding past events on a magnificent scale is very evident from the screenplay that he put up during the span of four complex yet emotional hours.

Opening with a teen, Xiao Si'r (Chang Chen), being demoted to a night school being an embarrassment to his family, the events that follow could have hardly been anticipated with all the suppressed psychoanalytic angles, which compels the character study of an adolescent to deliberately take over the cultural dramatics. The film per se uses a lot of interconnecting elements that keeps us from it's immediate classification of genre.

The primary amusement lies not it's intimate and life altering plot of juvenile delinquency, but in it's transforming impressionism on the audience which maturely allows us to explore the vulnerability of it's characters when subjected to violence in the teenage years.

Now the narrative effectiveness can be a problematic issue even when following a distinct motif of a coming of age rendering (not the narrative efficiency, which is absolutely terrific) as the consideration of too many non distinct characters are at play and the following of timelines becomes somewhat fevered due to the unraveling of timelines based off on the central character's point of view.

Much like 'Yi Yi', the current film is a multi-generational melodrama, but with a difference of a single character's evolutionary phases in life with a deviant dealing of sociological and exhilarating issues, which eventually gets subpoenaed from the world of blood. 

A memorable scene to support the explanation for a better comprehension would be when a young kid in a military school asks "What should I do ?" 

The negligent yet powerful expression concerns the director's vision on the oppressed people, thereby opening a societal confrontation.

Yang's graceful and intimidating brilliance on inserting political inertia in an already compromised life of hardship actually results in the context of  his characters, making up of the significant melody of confused adolescence. 

Influenced from 'Rebel Without a Cause', the characterization of the plot driving personality bears a personalized touch of Yang's naturalistic and intimate complications that counters recurring accounts and effects of war, amplifying the ultimate and exquisite quality of the characters than it already has. 

With qualities of a coming of age novel, Yang's infusing of recollections of memory on a note of subtle melancholy with the adherence of crime, 'A Brighter Summer Day' is a masterfully shot nostalgic commentary of teenage bewilderment with a clever use of a slight haze of romantics to keep the narrative far from being dragged.