“I think it’s one of the great films,” a screenwriter of my acquaintance said to me last week, at our first in-person meeting, of Edward Yang’s 1991 A Brighter Summer Day. His choice of words was, as always, entirely deliberate: “one of the great films,” not “one of the great Taiwan films,” not “one of the great films of its time,” not “one of the great Edward Yang films.” No, my friend’s estimation was extremely straightforward, and I suspect, entirely correct.
How to describe Yang’s four-hour film, which Yang spun out of a real-life story that occured in Taipei when the director was in his early teens? It’s on one level a family drama, on another a sort of social history, thoroughly steeped in issues of identity and national pride and culture. On still another level it’s a story of personal torment, informed by intimations of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Its narrative flow, such as it is, is unlike anything I’ve seen in any other film ever, including Yang’s similarly sprawling but considerably less angry final film Yi-Yi. The fluidity of the storytelling makes the sometimes shocking, appalling incidents conveyed therein (one of the film’s concerns is rival youth gangs, and it’s all vaguely unsettling threats and pushes until things spin out of anyone’s real control with pretty much the snap of the fingers) extra-resonant. The finale pulls all the thematic strings together in a way that makes one want to rewind the film in its entirety, and not just for reasons of enhanced comprehension; it’s a picture in which the thing you most deeply wish not to happen, happens.
Anyway, I loved it, but I need to see it once, twice more before I begin to think about writing about it, and I don’t necessarily mean that in the (precise) way Charles Taylor seems to find so deplorable in that Dissent piece that people were admiring/getting irritated about a while back (which is now available on the free-online tip if’n you’re still interested); it’s not that I didn’t get it but I really believe I need some more background on the film, and some actual notes, to write about it properly. The screening I attended last week at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Howard Gilman Theater was a pleasure trip foremost. Although I was aware that this engagement represented the first U.S. theatrical run of the film, which meant, as far as my own personal rule was concerned, the film would be eligible for a spot on one of my year’s-best list.
Because I agree with my screenwriter friend: I think it is one of the great films. It’s really kind of unbelievably good, and unusual, and pleasurable, and painful. I think as many people as humanly possible should see it. But there’s only so much I can do.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center has been doing a good deal to up its profile, and the afternoon screening of Brighter Summer Day I attended was not exactly poorly attended. For all that, I wished that the engagement of this World Cinema Foundation restoration of the film had been attended by more hoopla. All my life as a critic I’ve made it a point to bang the drum for stuff I love/believe in and would like to see a larger audience share; my earliest pieces of published criticism were advocacy essays on records by the likes of Peter Blegvad and Robert Wyatt, and I would play quite the earnest little maroon at events like the New Music Seminar, waylaying the likes of Bob Guccione, Jr., and haranguing him about WHY DOESN’T HE COVER THESE GREAT ARTISTS? I remember Jon Pareles approaching me and shaking his head wryly and saying words to the effect of “I was once like you, Grasshopper.” But anyway, I digress. The thing is, back then, writing about records, it was theoretically possible for the reader to go out and buy the records I was flogging. But as of right now, there’s likely no way for you to see this restoration of Brighter Summer Day (the World Cinema Foundation’s website has a screening schedule of their restorations, which helps, when the film is in fact screening…)
In 2006, when I was at Première, I put Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1968-made Army of Shadows on my year’s best list—at the TOP of my year’s best list, in fact!—and I quoted Robert Christgau’s review of Dylan/The Band’s The Basement Tapes, which had been recorded in the latter ’60s but not released officially until the mid-’70s: “We needn’t bow our heads in shame because this is the best album of 1975. It would have been the best album of 1967 too.” That went for Army at the time, I thought, and it goes maybe even double for Yang’s film. Still. In 2006 Army of Shadows got a relatively high-profile arthouse rerelease courtesy of Rialto Films. It was highly publicized; an event more or less. A place on a critic’s ten best list that motivated new viewers into seeking the film out would not necessarily led to something like a dead end.
In a post below, I link to a piece about a critics’ movement to raise awareness about Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret, a film with a difficult post-production history, a film that many of its champions believe is the victim of some form of corporate neglect on the part of its partial production/distribution entity, Fox Searchlight. I admire Margaret a good deal, but quite frankly, a not-insubstantial part of why I’m contemplating giving it a space on my own ten-best-of-the-year list, which will be part of the MSN Movies critics’ roundup, has to do with the question of what material good my advocacy of it can achieve; if the “#teammargaret” campaign does what it’s meant to (and it appears to have been working to an extent), the film may get something resembling a re-release, and hoped-for critical mass, such as it is, will help convince some people to go out, and fill seats in theaters. Right now, as it happens, my advocacy of A Brighter Summer Day occurs in something of a vacuum, one that I and/or other critics can’t do much to effect. This is not to say that Yang’s film is in any way a victim of neglect in this particular case: that is, the film WAS restored (in 2009, as it happened), and beautifully at that; but its very status as a restored film under this aegis defines, at the moment, the circumstances under which it can be seen. Which is to say that my putting it on a “Best of 2011” list is possibly the equivalent of talking to the wall, whereas putting Margaret, which is maybe not one of THE great films but is an entirely noteworthy and provocative/involving/engrossing one, on such a list might not only result in more people seeing and enjoying the film, not to mention maybe securing a DVD (or even Blu-ray!) release of the picture.
Given the situation of A Brighter Summer Day, I have to assume that there are forces at work securing such a release for that film; it’s a natural for Criterion. When/if that release comes, I’ll have a lot more to say about the picture. And what the hell, I haven’t actually composed my best-of-the-year list yet, so who knows how I’ll think about all this tomorrow. Just thought maybe some of you would be interested in engaging with respect to the continual, never-ending, mental torment of being a film critic, drum-beater, what have you…
I always assumed that MARGARET *would* get a home video release. Was that ever in doubt? (If it was, then the whole campaign just gained even greater urgency in my eyes.)
Were I not a.) dealing with a crisis or three upriver a piece, b.) unemployed and, c.) pace Miles Davis, broker than a broke-dick dog, I so would’ve been at one screening last week (at least!). There are few films I’ve wanted to see more than BRIGHTER. Possibly OUT 1 (thus demonstrating my vegetative bonafides). But just going by YI YI alone, I feel confident enough to say that Yang was – IS – one of the great directors. Is there any discussion around the restored print getting the Region 1 DVD treatment?
And +1,000,000,000 in re: advocacy criticism – how many countless passions of others’ became my own because of it? Or, and just an intriguingly and revealingly, not?
It’s also worth pointing out that ARMY OF SHADOWS was actually named Best Foreign Film of 2006 by the New York Film Critics Circle, so you weren’t the only one who felt that this type of advocacy was warranted at the time.
‘Yi Yi’ is a full-on, 3‑hour masterpiece worthy of being mentioned alongside Ozu. It’s one of the films I always cite – along with ‘Chungking Express’ and ‘Zodiac’, say – when people ask if modern cinema can ever match past glories.
Whew, and here I was afraid this was going to end up looking down on using a best-of-the-year list as a venue for advocacy. I know there are a great many purists out there who disdain such practices, but I don’t really know what the point is of making these lists otherwise.
Yes, point taken, Bilge; the “Army of Shadows” boost was a moof its own, which elicited the dispprobation of Armond White, which in turn made the movie into one of his frequent seemingly arbitrary objects of derision. What a dick.
I saw this on an import videodisc with burned-in subs at my university library several years ago. It still had a transfixing power even then, so I’d adore seeing a spruced-up release or, hope of hopes, a showing of the restoration here in the Midwest.
This post has obscurely depressed me. Or not so obscurely, maybe, as that hoped-for Criterion release is pretty much the only chance I have to see A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY, and while this may not have been a review, Glenn, you’ve made me very desperate to check it out.
I had been waiting to see this for years, ever since reading a brief but glowing critique about it from Jonathan Rosenbaum in 1999. For some foolish reason, I held out for the full-length version, and I didn’t come across it until 2007 when I German friend of mine had a bootleg copy on VCD. Even then, I passed on the chance, and then a few years ago, after I moved to NY, I finally caught it at a one-off screening at Lincoln Center, which was screening the same restored print, and it was staggering. I managed to rope in four other people to see it with me, none of whom had heard of it but were willing to sacrifice their Sunday afternoons to check it out. Since then, BAM’s screened it once, and I was happy to see it run again at Lincoln Center.
It’s an incredible shame that it’s not readily available ANYWHERE, moreso that Yang’s other films (with the exception of “Yi-Yi”) are even tougher to find. Just about everyone I know who isn’t a cinephile complains about the quality of films today, and in each case, it’s the same thing: they aren’t aware of the better stuff that’s out there, especially if it’s from overseas. If they aren’t in NYC, they have virtually no chance at seeing it in a theater, and even if they’re lucky enough to get it on NetFlix or VOD they’re not going to hear about it unless they’re actively reading Film Comment, blogs, etc. on a regular basis.
And FWIW, back when I was living in the Midwest, I wasn’t even aware of “Army of Shadows” until it popped up on a few year-end polls, specifically IndieWire and L.A. Weekly’s, which it topped, so advocacy of that sort IS appreciated.
Army of Shadows is a great film – but I guess my only quibble with it making top ten lists back in 06 was that it wasn’t exactly an unreleased film – just not shown in the US. It’s not akin to, for example, The Plot Against Harry being a “1989” film or Ivan the Terrible, Part II being a “1958” film. I’m sure there are plenty of great foreign films that played in one US city for one week that could use similar rediscovery but lack the same technicality. Like I said, just a quibble though.
Well, while we wait for a decent version to appear on DVD, here’s the google video version http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4930576570631580622 and http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4930576570631580622#docid=-6943825869846605588
Since this is the only version I’ve ever seen, I wouldn’t really know how much better a restored version would be.
Ugh. To be fair, it’s better than not seeing it at all, but the google version looks pretty horrible. The restoration looked stunning and pristine, like it was shot last week on good 35 stock.
Criterion has been trying to do this, but they said they were having some licensing issues.
I’m sure it’ll eventually see the light of day in a decent-looking home video version, but for now, A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY can also be had on eBay. (I’d include a link, but just do a search and a couple will pop up.) Quality unknown, but I seem to recall a decent version on VHS floating around back in the day…
If Armond White hates it then it’s GOT to be good.
I was lucky to see a 35mm print of A Brighter Summer Day at Chicago’s Film Center a decade ago. I was so taken with it that I bought the import VCD version (on four discs!), so I’m really glad to hear this restored print is making the rounds. I hope a blu-ray release is imminent.
For those complaining about the difficulty of finding Yang on home video, it’s been curiously underreported that Sony released an excellent region-free blu-ray of The Terrorizers earlier this year.
I bought A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY on VCD from an non-bootleg, Hong Kong vendor a few years back, but have yet to watch it (it is probably the source of the Google video). I checked a few of the major international retailers that used to have it and it is “out of stock” or not available at all. Now that I know about the restoration (and surely better English translation), I think I’ll wait for the chance to see “one of the great films” in better quality. Hopefully it will be licensed by someone next year…
And as an aside to this conversation, I was part of a discussion today about the decline of “spinning media” and how the economic perception that this may be starting to go away in the near future will surely influence the dwindling availability of titles like this that are perceived as having ‘less licensing appeal’. Activist criticism/Service journalism is really the only thing that can make a difference here, especially with films by someone who will unfortunately not be making any more in the future.…
I have no doubt I will be able to see MARGARET eventually, simply due to the name actors involved. Though I want to be able to see Lonergan’s uncompromised version. Hopefully that choice will be available, if the recent petition efforts succeed in getting it more mainstream exposure.…
Well, A. O. Scott did review it in the NY Times, which is a lot of hoopla for these don’t-pay-the-writers days. It, er, might also have helped if you’d run this piece BEFORE the film closed, no?
@michaelgsmith, that’s great about “The Terrorizers.” Hopefully “Taipei Story” will soon follow, it’s my favorite film from his ‘Urban Trilogy.’
“The restoration looked stunning and pristine, like it was shot last week on good 35 stock.”
I loved the film, and enjoyed the restoration, which I am endlessly thankful for, but this isn’t exactly accurate. The film was clearly neglected after its making, and so much of the restored print displays strobing and over-saturation and highly varying grain (I think this is even noted in the end credits). Considering the film’s only 20 years old (!), I was surprised by the condition…they must’ve thrown the original negative in a garage right after cutting, or something.
Absolutely worth seeing, and the World Cinema Foundation did a Herculean job restoring it, but it does not look like it was shot last week on good 35 stock.
I’ve missed the opportunity to see ABSD in London two years in a row now, but am just about to add that Terrorizers BluRay to my cart, so thanks for that michaelgsmith.
I thought this piece was going to be about similarities between Margaret and Yang’s films – I saw A Confucian Confusion at the BFI Yang season recently, and there’s something of its multifaceted nature in Margaret.
@ MW, John M: Yes, saying the restoration looked as if it had been shot last week IS maybe a bit of an oversell. Still, there’s much about it that’s beautiful, and as you said, the World Cinema Foundation’s work has been Herculean; the movie’s release history, Yang’s own relationship with the film, his estate’s relationship to the film: from what I understand, to say all these have been “tortured” would NOT be an understatement.
@ Stephen Bowie: Yes, I suppose it would have helped to run this before the FSLC engagement of the film had closed, but the piece as I wrote it wasn’t even really in my head when I saw the film, which was Wednesday, November 30. The film’s last day at the house was December 1. And I was busy.
@SpodoKomodo: I see your point, but I wasn’t really thinking along those lines; multi-faceted natures aside, I don’t see HUGE similarities between Lonergan’s work and Yang’s. In fact, the more I think about it, the more significant difference (of approach, attitude, and so on) I can discern. But that’s for another time…
Lonergan wrote the screenplay for the misbegotten Rocky & Bullwinkle movie, while Yang’s follow-up to ‘Yi Yi’, had he lived, was to have been an animated project starring Jackie Chan. That maybe kinda sorta perhaps counts as a similarity..? 🙂
Glenn, is there something online that describes the background with Yang’s relationship to the film, and his estate’s? Very curious. I was wondering: why are prints/negs of Yang’s films, with the exception of Yi Yi, so often in such poor condition? The films are not that old, the designs of each (especially ABSD) are meticulous and apparently well-funded, but most prints I’ve seen are warped and ragged. I thought this might be a peculiarity of Taiwanese cinema–poor archiving conditions, perhaps–but then Hou Hsiao-hsien’s films seem in much better shape. Was Yang himself not overly concerned with preserving the negatives?
For what it’s worth, from a structural standpoint, I do see similarities between Yang and Lonergan. And MARGARET and ABSD, in particular. Youth spiraling out of control, but not in the James Dean romanticized way.
The best video release of A Brighter Summer Day was the laserdisc, which is the source of most if not all the bootleg DVDs out there. I’ve seen two different DVD editions sourced from the same LD release, one better than the other (LD used analog video, so converting it to DVD allows more room for variation than just ripping some digital files and converting them to another format). However neglected the film has been on home video, it’s been much better served than That Day, on the Beach and Taipei Story, which so far as I know were only released in dreadful VHS editions (although I’ve found one or two references to an LD of the former).
Well I saw MARGARET last night and it’s one of the most excruciatingly bad films I have ever seen.
I expect to be blogging about it later today.
@Glenn – Oh, for sure. One of the interesting things about the reception of Margaret is that I’ve seen aspects of it compared to all kinds of people – Pialat, Rohmer, Cassavetes…
@John M, Okay, so hyperbole’s my favorite language…
HERE
http://fablog.ehrensteinland.com/2011/12/07/the-2011-leonard-pinth-garnell-award-goes-to-margaret/
I dunno, Dave, I’m a fan of much of your work, but that seems to be a whole lot of unwarranted sniping at Lonergan for his background and high school and early pre-film career choices, then a lot of excerpted SNL jokes, with a paragraph of a review so tightly sandwiched in there between the two that I literally missed it the first time I scrolled down.
And the review, such as it is, mostly praises the performers and then criticizes the film for the fact that different characters/actors show up too briefly in the lead character’s journey. Which you know might actually kind of be the *point* of the film.
But more importantly, I really don’t see how you go from good-performers-underused and a promising-character-who-devolves-into-hysteria to: WORST. MOVIE. EVER! Seriously, that’s a huge, HUGE leap, based on what you have there.
I mean, you are of course free to hate the film, and as a fan of the film I’m certainly very happy that you chose to see it in the first place, but…ah, screw it.
I’d link to my own piece which I wrote up a month or so ago, but I’ll desist for now. Plus, I really want to see the film again so I can write something more considered about it. I still think Glenn’s piece on MARGARET remains one of the best things written about it.
I don’t want to see the film again eiter. I’m sorry I saw it the first time.
The ability of good actors to rise above the worst much they’re offered to enact (in this case Berlin and Culkin) is scarcely a novelty in cinematic history.
I don’t consider my sniping to be unwaranted at all. It’s 2 1/2 hours of my life that I can’t get back.
“It’s 2 1/2 hours of my life that I can’t get back.”
Original!
I’m simply saying that trashing the guy for his choice of high school seems, I dunno, a mite unfair? That’s the part that’s unwarranted. Not the review itself.
As for the review itself, of course, actors rise above bad material all the time. I’m just saying that a review that mostly notes said rising above material doesn’t exactly make a case for WHY you think it’s among the worst movies ever made.
That said, I don’t want to pick on a quickie blog post. That’s not necessarily a review and I probably shouldn’t treat it as such. Sorry it didn’t do it for you.
Being a graduate of Communist Martyrs High ( aka. The High School of Music and Art, class of ’64) trashing other peopple’s high school “choices” is de rigeur.
“As for the review itself” – it’s the entire blog post.Not just the paragraph you selected. All the clips, all the cintations everything right down to the Prince and the Revolution finale.
I labor in the shadow of J‑L G and Guy Debord.
So, just to be clear – Ehrenstein DIDN’T like the movie, right? Am I the only one getting that vibe?
Speaking of Blegvad, there are two days left to listen to this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017sr7g
Y’know, I was looking at the World Cinema Foundation website the other day to see if they had a commercial partner for releasing their restored films. I would love to have a copy of Dry Summer and The Housemaid and I would love to SEE the other films they’ve restored, preferably not streaming to a computer. I live out in the sticks so it does me no freaking good if there’s a showing in New York or Lisbon or Berlin.
Is this Ehrenstein guy for real?
That’s not the only 2 1/2 hours of your life you can’t take back. In fact, as the world goes, you can’t have any of the millions of hours you’ve lived back. ANY of them. And as for mistaking blog-mockery and YouTube-embedding for film criticism, well… you’re wrong.
Man, Glenn. Richard Thompson did two GREAT shows right here in Petaluma the last 2 nights. Where were ya?? I wanna see MARGARET real bad too.
Oh yes I can Roderigo. Proust explains how.
“And as for mistaking blog-mockery and YouTube-embedding for film criticism, well… you’re wrong.”
I “mistake” nothing.
It’s what I thought all along: Ehrenstein realizes that his pissy little post wasn’t film criticism. Some people, all you gotta do is give ’em enough rope…
What YOU claim to have “thought” is of no consequence whatsoever.
“I would love to have a copy of Dry Summer and The Housemaid and I would love to SEE the other films they’ve restored, preferably not streaming to a computer.”
The Housemaid has a very good region-free Korean DVD, with English subtitles for the main feature and the extras. Like most Korean DVDs it drifts in and out of print, but there’s a Korea-based seller on eBay flogging what they claim to be legitimate copies.
Criterion was supposedly handling the U.S. video releases of the World Cinema Foundation’s titles, but nothing specific has been heard on that front. Given their usual pace, I don’t know how they’ll ever get all them out, unless they combine a bunch of them into Eclipse sets.