A CITY OF SADNESS
by Hou Hsiao
Hsien
translation of an article from JOURNAL FILM (July 1991),
Freiburg (Germany)
I.
The titles: simple dark background,
light signs. From the off, we hear the speech of capitulation by the
japanese emperor. A turn up like the light at the end of the tunnel
in LIEN LIEN FUNG CHEN (Love, dust, wind). The first picture appears
like a photograph which is going to be visible in the developing
fluid. A corpulent man (Wenxiong, the oldest of four brothers of a
taiwanese family), who prays and burns smoking sticks. Weak light. In
another part of this house a woman who gives birth to a child with
cries of pain. Parts of different dialogues, the noisy walking of
Wenxiong. At one time the electricity comes back , a lamp is switched
on. With almost ritual precision, Wenxiong enfolds folds the
lampshade and leaves the frame. The lamp and a part of the room -
deserted. From outside of the frame we listen the confusion of
different voices. and again the cries of the woman, which
disappears into an electronic roar, that seems to come from far away
of space and time of this film. Then the second part of the opening
titles: symphonic synthesizer music, the break between the time of
the plot (the first years after the second world war) and the time of
a cinema of the Nineties. You can call it the sound of the time
machine cinema, which carries us in time and space from the present
and brings us back to it.
II.
The family Lin during preparing of a
party. Wenliang, the third brother´s return from the war is
expected. A view into a room, additional narrowed through interiors.
In the narrowed cadrage the busy activities of the persons, the
father who burns sacred money, the woman, who are managing the
household. Parts of conversation, which consist them like in a puzzle
to informations. Often, the persons leave the cadrage an enter again,
from the small visible part of the room into the one of imagination.
III. In the longest shots of the film, the camera remains invariably
an observant view from a distant angle. Persons who eat, drink and
talk, Scenes which constrains the dramatic subject. The passing by of
the men and the things conserved in little eternities of about three
minutes long plansequences. At the beginning of the film, there is a
meeting of intellectuals in a bar. Sometime they begin singing a
nostalgic song. Someone opens the window in the background of the
middle of the picture: a blue quadrat , in which the view can escape
in the deep of the frame to the outside. The liberation of the view
out of the imprison of a limited room. No information that one of the
persons Hinoe will play an important role in the film. A cut, which
does not interrupt the soundtrack, to a mountain landscape occupied
with lines, like a railway net. The montage, which does no build the
meaning, but offers possibilities to make links in your own head.
IV.
The corridor of a hospital. The screen
is narrowed through walls and columns, double framed which makes the
room smaller than the half of the film format, in which the acteurs
are moving. The view is again to escape until the entrance gate of
the hospital, where daylight and green plants promise the freedom.
This image returns more times in the film varied, perhaps in the same
composition. Once, after the first bloody confrontations, this
narrowed frame is crowed by doctors and nurses, who treat and carry
injured people. The world seems to be reduced on this little peace of
space. It is night.
No light at the end of the tunnel.
V.
Opposition members meet in the flat of Wenqing, the youngest of the four brothers. He is deaf since his childhood. While the others are talking, Wenqing and the nurse Hinomi are sitting close to each other. Even though in the same room with the discussing opposition members, just centimeters from their table dominates for a moment the story of this couple. From an recordplayer comes the “Loreley” song "I don´t know, what shall it mean". The communication between both is limited in the exchange of little written papers, which appear on the screen as long titles like references to the silent film age. In writing, Hinome explains the deaf the story of the Loreley-saga. An intimate scene of a beginning love story, which asks the same attention like the information about the Killing in the confrontation between the KMT-government and the underground movement and the civil population. In a time of violence and terror, long lyric sequences like little islands, where you can escape sometimes.
Opposition members meet in the flat of Wenqing, the youngest of the four brothers. He is deaf since his childhood. While the others are talking, Wenqing and the nurse Hinomi are sitting close to each other. Even though in the same room with the discussing opposition members, just centimeters from their table dominates for a moment the story of this couple. From an recordplayer comes the “Loreley” song "I don´t know, what shall it mean". The communication between both is limited in the exchange of little written papers, which appear on the screen as long titles like references to the silent film age. In writing, Hinome explains the deaf the story of the Loreley-saga. An intimate scene of a beginning love story, which asks the same attention like the information about the Killing in the confrontation between the KMT-government and the underground movement and the civil population. In a time of violence and terror, long lyric sequences like little islands, where you can escape sometimes.
VI.
The variability of
languages - Mandarin, different chinese dialects, taiwanese and
japanese - is at the same time a crisis of communication. The
subtitles are not only useful for Europeans. On the other hand:
Inserts, titles or spoken letters and diaries as voice over. The
women, almost without any power are the real chroniclers. The
propagandistic radios peeches of the government, are confronted with
the personal reflexions of the women, especially of Hinomis. The
public history and the history of persons whose voices will be
disappear from the history books. The spoken and written language as
a chaos or as as effort to make meaning. Language which reaches it´s
limitations and which finds on nonverbal levels correspondents in
glances and little gestures. BEIQING CHENGSHI is also a film about
the language, that tries to name and about the things which are
talking itself.
VII.
The deaf Wenqing is imprisoned. From
outside half covered through the grating, a little group of
imprisoned. At the first sight, you do not recognize any terror
before the death. Emotions, of which you got only ideas if you look
between the little gestures which seem sometimes be reduced on
simple mechanical functions of arms and legs. A name is called.
Bodies from which only the torsos are visible who are embracing each
other for the last farewell. Fragments of a tragedy, which is going
on in the invisible. The door, which breaks the gaze into the
compartment is opened, a man is taken away by an armed man. Some
times later, someone is shooting. Some moments later, Wenqings name
is called. On the face of his companions he realize, whose name was
called. Again the door is opened. They bring him through a corridor,
which seems to be reaching an eternity in the depth of the of the
film image. The camera remains invariably, does not follow them. At
the end of the corridor, they open a door and shut it. Then the
deserted corridor like a tunnel without an end. There is the idea of
the incredible terror, a nameless danger.
No light at the end of the tunnel.
VIII.
Wenqing is only able to communicate
visual or writing with his environment. He is photographer. Like his
diary- writing girlfriend, he is also a chronicler of events out of
the public history. Often, we see him watching or retouching
photographs on a lighted desk. Through the light, strange almost
unknowable chimeres, sepia-colored phantom beings suspended from
time. The whole film is no big family-saga, more an over dimensional
family album. Every image is a witness of the presence of men and
things. Every image with it´s own fragmented story. BEIQING CHENGSHI
is closer to a film like Ozu´s BAKUSHU than Xie Jins THE TOWN
HIBISCUS. Perhaps independent from Ozu, the same deep research for
the destination and meaning of cinema and it´s basic element: the
photographed picture. The persons are not only suffering under
history, they try to record and preserve history, maybe in the
unconscious idea of their own mortality. The photograph of the
eldest( killed) brother on a funeral carried by relatives, the try at
least to save a very small part of the life out of the time and
conserve after the death. One of the last scenes, which reminds me in
a strange kind in André Bazins essay "The ontology of the
photographed picture": Wenqing in front of a mirror, preparing
his hairs in almost ritual manner. Hinomi and their child are sitting
in a painted decor, a paper decoration, with painted chimney, painted
vase, painted window. Nothing alive. A false idyl, the dream of a
better life out of the reality (out of the life). The klick of the
photo camera. The picture is freezing, the position of the persons is
likely them of mummies. From the off we hear the voice Hinomis, who
tells, that this pictures is made three days before the arrest of
Wenqing. But he insisted to finish his work. Since days, she does not
get any news from him. It is not told, but their remains the sure
feeling, that Wenqing was executed.
IX.
Images, scenes, which are
not able for summarizing. Scenes which appear like strong divided
rooms of a building and can not be simply connected by the montage to
a story. The montage offers a number of possibilities for
combinations of this sometimes fragmented or even mentioned stories
to connect them through the own imagination. Very few flashbacks,
diary texts spoken from the off like little underground corridors,
through which you can find ways from one piece of story to the next.
The plot, you read in a synopsis is partitioned in different
stories, which keep themselves independent from the "main plot"
its autonomy even when they are connected with each other:
The story of Wenliang, the third
brother, who returned from the war, in which he was driven by the
japanese occupants into a mental wreck, who turns caused bis his
lability in criminal circles, who is imprisoned as an colaborateur
and who is stroken to a physical wreck in the prisons of the
KMT-regime. The rest of his identty is the forbidden eating of almost
spoiled sacred fruits. It deals also with the Story Hinomis, Wenqings
and their love story or the story of a family who suffers under the
KMT-government which is like a continuance of the japanese
occupation. Even the second brother (a doctor), who did not return
from the war at all is present in a little
story. His wife cleans every day his instruments, hoping he will come
back. A list you could fill with more examples. These are the stories
of the nameless, who won´t be in the ent history books. Stories like
splinter of a broken glass. Facets of human lives, that let shine
for one moment the uniqueness of one of them through: The death of
the elder brother. His death caused by an attack with a knife. Short
ugly scenes. Without any pathos the unthinkable fact of death. Every
person is a little universe, every death a little end of the world.
X.
The last picture. Like at the
beginning, a room without the presence of men, a vase, a window. A
still life. The indifference of the lifeless things as the opposite
to the moving and limited (life) time of men. The cinema turns back
to it´s roots, the photography. Then a fade out, which closes the
room which was opened by a fade up. The credits, a traditional rite
of cinema, the signs like strange cryptic signs on a gate to a space
which opens and shut, in that we were only observants but in which we
felt for 160 minutes the almost uncanny presence of men and things.
There are films, which can not be resumed with a synopsis; thy are
like rooms, in which you must have inhabited for a certain time.
thanks so much for this ...
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