A Brighter Summer Day

the fact this absolute masterpiece was unavailable for so long is akin to a fucking war crime

An intimate, albeit reserved, coming-of-age story masquerading as an epic, giving us the full thrust of 1961 Taiwan and its precarious sociopolitical underpinnings while focusing on the influence and consequence this uneasy existence has on one family. It's a slow-burn of a film that feels at ease while avoiding the pitfall of being challenging or boring - in part because the wonderful cinematography, with its depth of focus, clarity, and natural lighting, makes you feel right there with them.

Perhaps the greatest epic of the "little things". Social dislocation, delinquency, life under military dictatorship, both lack and search of (national, sexual, cultural, personal) identity during the decade that changed everything -- sometimes in the most possible tragic ways, at least in Taiwan. So precise, yet so mundane. So local, yet so universal.

Arkadaşlar, film tanımında yazan hiçbir şeyi anlatmıyor. Anlattığı tek şey bi kız meselesi ciddiyim. Bir de herkes Çinli olduğu için falan karakterleri karıştırıyorsunuz hele bir de benim gibi durdura durdura izliyorsanız. Bazı sahneleri ise nasıl dersler 'masterpiece' gibi hissettirdi, ağlayacaktım. Sevgiler, ben. Ne bi Best of Youth ne de bi Yi-Yi. Bunu bir ara İngilizceye çevirebilirim because I'm good at English.

Film math: Ozu's belt-buckle-height cameras + Wes Anderson's framing styles + Altman's ensembles + Suzuki's teen angst. While it has many incredibly powerful moments, the "main" character still feels like a cypher at the end of the film. There aren't many four-hour movies I've felt like re-watching immediately. Favorite scene: the basketball coming out of the dark alley.

si'r neettin si'r... çocuk kafayı yedi

Don't really see how anyone could view this as slow. I think people are forgetting long doesn't equal slow. One of the saddest depictions of growing up. The new restoration is one of the better things criterion has done.

There's a lot of dead spots, and even when things are happening it often feels unnecessary. One problem is that there's too many characters, so you need the extra time just to figure out who's who, who knows who, who's dating who, etc. The last hour is very good, though. The character arcs are intriguing, as are the parallels between the adolescent world and the adult world.

This was a slow-paced coming-of-age film with a strong first half and a weaker, much less interesting second half. The first half features two youth gangs as they navigate the '50s -'60s Taipei streets. The second half is more familial drama but since I never connected with any of the characters this was where I really started to notice the runtime. The film stumbles a bit a times but Edward Yang's direction and sure hand kept the film moving.

[spoilers] A feat of endurance: 4 hours with not a lot going on really pushes at what a reasonable viewer might tolerate (in the show I attended, the experience was interspersed with many people attempting the 'screen limbo' in order to go to the bathroom). That said, I loved the innocence of the teen band set among the gang infighting. Who would have thought, leaving samurai swords lying around for kids to play with would not turn out well?

Yang's attention to detail is outstanding. Visually gorgeous, so many beautiful shots, I actually found it overwhelming. Truly 4-dimensional sets: people move through space, disappear behind an obstruction for a short period of time before reappearing on the other side. And who needs mirrors when you've got barely reflective walls? So many words of wisdom. It's hard to process and take it all in. I'm in awe of the masterful filmmaking and can't help but score the film very highly.

Not quite as gobsmackingly beautiful as Yi Yi (it is still absolutely stunning), but this kicks you in the nuts in a way that movie doesn't. All of Yang's films I've seen are so insanely tactile and full of life and speak to the most intimate/personal and the largest societal impacts on the life of a person, a family, a nation, a human race. So so good.

good movie

This is a very good movie, but perhaps doesn't stand up to its reputation. It's nearly 4 hours long and does a pretty good job of justifying the length, though I do think it probably could have stood with some cuts. My main issue with it (which is mostly on me, I think) is that I had quite a bit of difficulty at times remember the characters and their affiliations. I wish there'd been some visual way to tell who was in the Little Park Gang and who was in the others, etc.

I couldn't care less.

peak kino

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Um Dia Quente de Verão estreava há 30 anos no Taiwan. Tô há dois dias com resfriado e caiu justamente no aniversário de um filme com quatro horas de duração, ou seja, estou fisicamente impossibilitada de achar essa uma obra-prima como muitos acham, quando o rever em melhores condições debateremos isso com cuidado, mas por hora o achei bem bom, especialmente a mise-en-scène brilhante do sempre grande Edward Yang. Box Versátil Nouvelle Vague Taiwanesa.

To be honest I feel a lot of ABSD' reputation comes from it almost being a lost film, and people in the West touting it as a forgotten masterpiece when they sought it out. It is visually exquisite of course, but it could have easily been trimmed by at least 30 minutes.

Four hours and I wasn't bored for one second.

Visually quite good--loved the shot of Si'r and Ming talking reflected in the opaque door glass. However, I felt the whole thing far too drawn out for what ultimately resolves itself in a pretty underwhelming and common fashion. I wish I knew Si'r really at all. I could see him teetering between light and dark throughout, but rather than reveal, the ambiguity of his portrayal just shrouds him completely in mystery. I think something, anything is necessary to make it work on a narrative level.

Tackles a lot of themes but never feels forced. Yang concentrated on the story here, but he was aware of the weight that every one of the characters has to bear in the scenes. I loved the psychology of the protagonist. There was so much going on in him and the movie brought across all the complexity and mystery. The movie lost steam from time to time, but the last 30 minutes were pure heartbreak.

A stark warning about the dangers of incel rage.

Need to watch again - but amazing

This went by rather quickly. Reminds me of "The Best of Youth", but this film here is more polished and coherent than it. The scenery is so completely natural that it just pulled me in. Many great, memorable characters and scenes.

Filmen anses av filmregissörer och kritiker vara den 98:nde bästa filmen någonsin (TSPDT). På ett plan kan jag utan tvekan hålla med: Varje filmruta är ett konstverk, kameraarbetet är helt enkelt häpnadsväckande! Men detta räcker inte för att bära upp denna långa film. Historien är tunn och vindlande, det finns några häpnadsväckande logiska luckor som inte kan avslöjas här (spoilers) och filmen är bra nära fyra timmar lång. Sammanvägt ger detta betyget 3, men trean är sva

In its relay of the middle 20th century's rapid globalization, A Brighter Summer Day courses the sociopolitical history leading toward the type of alienated youth film so popular among this generation of Chinese filmmakers: the modern, technological grids of urban detachment made by Yang, Tsai, and Wong. It is such a large, long, sprawl of a film that it can feel less pertinent in moments, but its final scenes are moving in ways which justify all the time and effort.

There's probably no way that this was ever going into live up to it's near-mythic reputation, but it's still very good. If it does feel slightly disappointing, its only because of how exalted it's been in cinephile circles over the years. I do have to wonder if it's scarcity did feed into it's reputation, because while it's definitely pretty great, I'm not sure it's length is entire justified (although it certainly doesn't feel particularly slow), at least compared to Yi Yi.

Yang was talented, but A.B.S.D has been seriously overpraised in some circles. Inspired by an event from his youth, Yang effectively recreates a turbulent bygone era in Taiwan's history when its sense of identity was lost. His mistake was turning it into an allegory by connecting the boy's actions to the problems of the nation, which are only tenuously linked. If it was an angry polemic it could have worked, but it moves like molasses and at 4 hours doesn't justify its excessive length.

... this f u c k e d m e u p.

Funny how 4 hours can feel so fleeting. The visual and audial achievement cannot be understated. The sets, designed by Edward Yang, act as essential catalysts to mood and behavior. And, like so many films from the Taiwanese New Wave, the central character is loneliness. The street gang set pieces are compelling. But this is without a doubt a tragedy. The sad mask to Yi Yi's more life-affirming one. Yang truly was a master and I believe his work's impact will only grow stronger over time.

The new restoration is amazing.

2nd viewing

2nd viewing; my memories of the film were fuzzy, possibly because the crappy bootleg laserdisc transfers of the film we had to settle for for 25 years were also fuzzy. Again I was pretty unclear about who everybody was until well into the film. It's hard to explain why this movie is so powerful; the story has some universal themes but I can sense a lot of personal and cultural context I'm missing. Yang pulls off something few movies accomplish: convey the feeling of a novel played out on film.

There are dead spots. The ending is bad. But it kept me engaged for its entire length, which is no mean feat, and I'd watch it again.

#425

Slow but powerful metaphor for Taiwan's growing pains. I wish Yang had taken some time to introduce the characters more properly but things do eventually make sense and the development of the lead character is very interesting and culminates wonderfully.

"A Brighter Summer Day is itself in color, but it may as well be monochrome." - Ed Gonzalez

The film captures the social malaise, corruption, and violent deliquency amongst 1960's Taiwanese youth near perfectly. The story arcs all revolve around a notorious juvenile murder which gives the film a somewhat fatalistic bent. This was an ambitious film but the length and glacial pace is certainly one of its weak points. Yang's style is a bit impenetrable because it requires some knowledge of Taiwanese culture and history to begin with. Still an excellent film.

440

Needs rewatch.

A complex ,but at the same time down-to-earth story exploring the struggle of (and for) identity in Taiwan. I like the idea and the execution, but I didn't find it particulary involving, and I fear it is because of the poor transfer and horrible subtitles on the version I saw. I had a hard time telling the many different characters apart, and I believe the bad technical quality may have contributed to that. Apparently a Criterion treatment is on its way, looking forward to that.

520

Boring.

# 535