Taipei Story (1985)

Unrated, but this has some content.  This one has more to do with violence of all kinds.  One of the characters has a short fuse, causing him to get into all kinds of fights.  There's a stabbing at one point and people die.  There's also some domestic abuse.  There's male violence towards women.  Some children go through some harrowing situations.  It feels more R-rated than unrated.  It's not intensely R, though, despite all the things that I just listed.

DIRECTOR:  Edward Yang

See, they saved this one as the last in the box set because it slaps.  They know that they need me to buy the next box set (which, in my case, is Box Four) so they have to tell me that there are some good movies in these box sets.  The insane thing about this movie is that it almost doesn't belong in the World Cinema box set because it kinda / sorta breaks the rules.  I thought the mission statement of Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project was to shine a light on the cinema of underrepresented countries.  Um, China's films have been pretty well-viewed, especially in context of the Criterion Collection.  While Taipei Story may not be the most famous of Edward Yang's films, Edward Yang is a name that you can drop around cinephiles and there's a good chance that he's recognized.  Again, they need me to come back and spend more money on the next box set.

I know that Edward Yang directed this, not Wong Kar-Wai.  But I'm listening to a Wong Kar-Wai Spotify playlist to get myself in the headspace of Taipei Story.  According to Scorsese, Yang is one of the guys who started the Chinese New Wave...and I get that. Sure, you need to understand the cinematic history of a country to really proclaim a film part of the New Wave or not, but I'm going to trust him because a lot of this movie screams "New Wave."  Golly, Yang spends so much time and effort making a pretty movie about character.  Sure, there's a lot of plot here and I'll even admit that I didn't catch all of the plot beats.  I had to go to Wikipedia a bit because I wasn't sure what some of the dynamics of the film were, but that's just because I can be a big ol' dummy at times.  But there was never a point where I lost the character motivations of individual scenes.  Ultimately, this is the story of two people lost to Late Stage Capitalism (despite being in a Communist country!) and how they are husks of their former selves.

It doesn't mean that the characters aren't frustrating.  Both Lung and Chin (both body part names?) need to be shaken out of their self-imposed miseries.  I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, but a lot of their issues would be dealt with a healthy combination of therapy and shaking them out of their respective malaises.  But these are two people who, while being colored by their flaws, are good people.  They live in a society (not unlike the Joker) that is filled with people who are self-involved and users.  Both Lung and Chin seem outside of the world of greed.  Chin's biggest issue is that she wants this moment of silence beyond corporate greed to last forever, despite having the depression that accompanies non-productivity.  But Chin's initial intentions are noble.  She has loyalty both Lung and Mrs. Mei, even if that loyalty isn't deserved.  She's devoted to these characters not because Lung or Mrs. Mei are necessarily good people. It's just that they look like saints compared to the other people in Chin's life.  She has these family members that are not only overbearing, but do not see her for her personhood.

It's so odd that Lung --pathetic Lung! --is the protagonist of the story.  It's a hot take to say that Chin isn't a protagonist, but a lot of Chin is sitting in a room waiting for something to happen to her.  (That's a little unfair, but is it?) But Lung is a really weird choice for a major character because his main trait is "mopey".  Lung is a real Charlie Brown in this movie --which is both a compliment and a criticism.  Charlie Brown is a good person who keeps getting screwed by the system, yet he keeps engaging the game.  I mean, the main difference between Charlie Brown and Lung is that Lung's natural tendency is to fight versus Charlie Brown, who is written to be the world's doormat.  But Lung is obsessed with a game that happened in his childhood.  He has these very Death of a Salesman like dreams, where he's convinced that, if he works hard enough, things will turn around for him.  Unlike Willy Loman, Lung lacks the self-delusion that he's great.  He's a guy who simply has that almost American Dream where --if he works and does the right thing --the world will work out for him.

The thing about Lung is that it isn't the world that brings him down necessarily.  It's the fact that other people don't follow the rules of society.  I don't think that Yang has created Taipei Story to admonish do-gooders.  Lung is in a constant state of fixing other people's problems.  When he sees injustice or a moral dilemma, he understands that investment in these people will lead to his own issues down the line.  We're supposed to be mildly angry at Yang for sacrificing his own desires for others, but we're supposed to be more mad at others.  Geez, I hate that I'm making all of these comparisons, but I can't help it.  Lung is George Bailey without the eventual happy ending.  Instead of having all those people stepping in and saving George for all the good that George did, Lung just dies stabbed to death, his anger and pent up rage getting the better of him.  Even taxi cabs let him bleed to death on the side of the road.  It's incredibly depressing, but that might be Yang's story to tell.  The one thing that Taipei Story does is avoid the fantastical in exchange for the gritty reality of a world that doesn't praise it's do-gooders.

I think I get more frustrated at Chin than I should.  If Lung is the character who is grounded to the past to the point of a flaw, one looking at the future should be the respectable one.  I mean, she gets the happier ending of the two, but even that ending is incredibly bittersweet.  She doesn't get to go to America, but that's mostly because she has woken up to the notion that any dramatic change isn't really going to bring her any real happiness.  It's going to be a Band-Aid in the grand scheme of things.  It's a solid message that Yang has for Chin, but I also am frustrated that Yang doesn't really offer any solutions outside of getting reabsorbed into the corporate rat race.  One of the frustrating things about the end --which is ambiguous in terms of the takeaways of Lung's outbursts --is that we're not sure if it's the right answer.  Lung outright tells Chin that America won't fix things and that marriage won't fix things either.  I kind of like the idea that life is slow and that we have to push through some of these moments instead of circumventing them.

But then Lung dies...he dies a sad and pathetic death.  So is the message that the two should have gotten married and run away to America?  Part of me also likes that.  I mean, two Band-Aids might have done the trick, right?  I'd love that as an argument, but it didn't seem like Lung and Chin really were romantically ever interested in one another.  To a certain extent, they loved each other in the sense that they cared for one another.  But also, Chin is all over the place when it comes to her feelings for Lung.  I mean, she hits him.  Tell me that moment didn't break your heart at all.  It's the takeaway of the movie for me.  But a movie like this is almost intentionally ambiguous.  It's more about how hard even a basic life is.  It's critical of existence without offering too many real solutions, which isn't the worst argument in the world.  Instead, it's more about the sympathy we feel for these characters.

I dug it.  This is a pretty movie with great acting and just fantastic, almost hypnotic, pacing.  And guess what?  I'll probably end up buying Box Four one day.  Just I need a moment from Law of the Border still...