Yi Yi (A One and a Two) (2000) Wu Nien-jen, Elaine Jin, Kelly Lee, Jonathan Chang, Issey Ogata, Ke Suyun. Written and directed by Edward Yang. Mandarin and Japanese with English subtitles. 173 minutes. No MPAA rating, 4 stars (out of five stars)
Review by Ed Johnson-Ott, NUVO Newsweekly www.nuvo.com Archive reviews at http://us.imdb.com/ReviewsBy?Edward+Johnson-Ott To receive reviews by e-mail at no charge, send subscription requests to ejohnsonott@prodigy.net or e-mail ejohnsonott-subscribe@onelist.com with the word "subscribe" in the subject line.
To best enjoy "Yi Yi," I suggest you do the following: Stay in your car for a moment when you arrive at the theater. Breathe in and out deliberately, allowing your system to slow down. Remind yourself that movies can be more than rapid-fire edits, explosions and dick jokes. Continue the conscious breathing until you feel relaxed and centered, then proceed to the box office.
Set in contemporary Taiwan, "Yi Yi" is a rich look at a middle class Taipei family. Written and directed by the very talented Edward Yang, the film (his seventh, but the first to be distributed in America) presents a glossy family portrait as a completed jigsaw puzzle, then begins removing the pieces. With affection and an unflinching lens, he reveals the vast distances between people who are supposedly very close.
At the center of it all is Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang), a bright-eyed 8-year-old boy with a habit of asking hard questions ("Daddy, I can't see what you see and you can't see what I see. How can we know more than half the truth?"). After numerous adults pat him on the head and move away, he comes up with his own suppositions and acts on them, using a camera to make his statement. Yang-Yang takes a series of photos of the back of people's heads. Asked why, he explains to a subject, "You couldn't see it, so I showed you."
His relatives are too preoccupied to think about what he has said. Shortly after a raucous wedding, Yang-Yang's grandmother has a stroke and goes into a coma. She eventually ends up at home, with doctors encouraging her loved ones to try and stimulate her senses by talking to her. The process proves to be more difficult than it sounds. NJ (Wu Nienjen), the family patriarch, compares it to praying, because "you're not sure the other party can hear, and you're not sure whether you're sincere." His wife Min-Min (Elaine Jin) ends up in tears, exclaiming, "I have nothing to say to Mother. I tell her the same things every day. I have so little. How can it be so little? I live a blank."
Mom lights out for a mountain temple to meditate, leaving NJ in an even more surreal space. The electronics executive runs into Sherry (Ke Suyun), his first love, a woman he has not seen for 30 years. She is as shattered by the encounter as he, following him to sputter, "Why didn't you come that day? I waited and waited. I never got over it."
Why we end up with the people we do is a recurring theme in "Yi Yi." And what if we had made different choices? NJ ponders these questions while hanging with his friend, Mr. Ota (Issey Ogata), a Japanese games designer with a gift for classical piano. NJ treats Ota with deference and something approaching awe – Ota seems to serve the same function as Min-Min's guru – but there are no obvious answers. He finally calls Sherry, who wonders aloud, despite the fact that she too is married, if they should pick up where they left off.
Mind you, this is just one relatively small part of a very large film. Every member of the family has his or her own set of joys and challenges, with decidedly more of the latter than the former. Director Yang gently weaves together their circumstances, leisurely, but not lazily. "Yi Yi" is nearly three hours long, but the film never lags, drifting by like a silk ribbon on a breezy day. Yang knows the correct pace for his story and expects us to be smart enough to adjust to it. There are pauses inserted throughout the film. At one point he cuts to an image of clouds against a blue sky and, by my count, holds the shot for 19 seconds, which would be an eternity in most studio productions. But pauses like that allow extra time for reflection, and a film like this offers much upon which to reflect.
Yang further accents his character studies with striking camerawork. Many scenes are filmed against, or through, reflective glass, presenting the outside of these interior worlds. Where most directors overuse close-ups in personal moments, Yang favors medium to long shots and, rather than distancing the viewer, the placement makes the scenes seem more intimate. We study the well-composed settings and listen to the people in the middle that are trying to make sense of the life racing by them. Watching them makes it a bit easier to put one's own crisis du jour in context, just one of the many gifts that "Yi Yi" has to offer.
© 2001 Ed Johnson-Ott
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