scenes in reality and fantasy. Basically, the film narrates its story in an episodic way.
The story is thus understated, and indicates “unprecedented shift from the mimetic to the psychological” (Tay 411).62 Like Hou’s autobiographical films, in which he accumulates the “details according to atmosphere affinities and the similarity of various visual impression” (Neri 161), Chang’s films loosely float in a chronological
62 Here I borrow William Tay’s phrase on the style of Chinese modernist novelist Wang Meng. Also influenced by the modernistic ideologies of the West, Wang in his novels developed several techniques correspondent with cinematic modernism’s development. See Tay, William. “Modernism and Socialist Realism: The Case of Wang Meng.” World Literature Today: A Literary Quarterly of the University of Oklahoma (WLT) 1991 Summer; 65(3): 411-13.
order. As a result, the changes of scene deserve more notice. The scene depicting the marginalized teenagers’ last escape begins with an empty shot of a neighborhood alley.
After this, Wei runs from the other side of the alley toward us, and the camera tracks him running between the alleys. The next shot, from another point of view, shows Wei running on the bank he and Jie used to play on. Spatially, this shot constructs the geography of the scene; temporally, it links the action that takes place at this moment with previous scenes. This scene not only creates verisimilitude, but also implies the later impact. But it also has connotations of post-colonial creation of realism and anti-realism, the blurred temporal spectrum in order to achieve what Ping-hui Liao has called the “mixture of identity and post-identity” (Passing and Re-articulation, 113).63 The endings do not follow the typical linear realist timeline. The forking path endings created the sense of haunted realism emerging from an honest realist aesthetic.
At later points in The Best of Times, the logic of editing enhances more
psychological or emotional patterns. When Ah Jie is seen again at the spot where Wei witnessed his death, for example, the first image we see of him is a long shot of his figure framed in the narrow alley between two walls; the camera turns back to focus on Wei in another long shot as he tries to figure out whether Jie’s appearance is real or not. This is followed by a cut on action as Jie talks back and swears about Wei’s
63 Ping-hui Liao argues that Hou made City of Sadness a postcolonial mimicry. He offers an idea of
“intimate histories,” which is a kind of empathy. According to Liao, Wenqing’s muteness demonstrates contemporary people’s indifferent attitude toward politics. It is a mixture of “identity” and
“post-identity.” In similar case, this could be applied to Chang’s films due to Chang’s arrangements often neglected the obvious linear timeline instead of the characters’ subjective understanding on history and time.
lateness, and then by another cut back to Wei as Jie speaks off screen. With another cut, Jie and Wei are both framed in the walls. Not only are these two central
characters’ interaction portrayed by this series of shots and reverse shots, but Wei’s regret and frustration are also built into the editing. Jie’s doubtful existence is always a certain distance away with Wei. Without being in the same shot, Wei seems to witness his lifetime choice again. The establishing shot of this sequence from the point of view of Wei combines with stock framings of Jie takes us right into Wei’s psychologically rendered space. Although here the film seems to follow standard continuity editing devices, the timeline is no longer linear or clear. The pace and décor mimicking the previous part implies the occurrence of the other chance. Next, Wei’s inquiry moves on and, from his point-of-view, spots a group of gangsters hustling toward Jie, just as before. Unlike what he did last time, however, he runs toward them to stop them. The whole sequence is handled in a series of shot/reverse shots, at this very spot with a street lamp on which has been written “Road, light and Truth.” These shots/reverse shots emphasize the ambiguity of what’s going to happen.
Though the ending of the film is a chase scene in which the pursuers and the pursued are supposed to be equal in status, Chang sets up a simple spatial connection between the environment and the protagonists. The editing of their movements is probably one of the most striking features here. As the two protagonists flee from the gangsters in the alley, shots do not alternate between the gangsters and the two.
Instead, they focus only on the movement of the two teens. Without the use of parallel editing to show the gangsters’ parallel progress, the shots jump from one location to
another and enhance the temporal and spatial movement. This organization of the chase helps to demonstrate the filial love between Wei and Jie.
Chang’s editing of the very end of this film creates truly fantastic psychological patterns of time and space. The film’s final shots are presented as a jump cut to a dream world, freezing time by having the two protagonists swimming and playing in the water like fish, almost as if to suggest that only by escaping the real world can they survive. The final scene of the sequence is the film’s most famous and influential.
Accompanied by the sudden silencing of all sound, Wei and Jie’s jump are filmed in slow motion. The first couple of establishing shots in the water are accompanied by blackouts. After the last blackout, they begin to move again within the shining, blue ocean water. In nearly ten cuts in approximately five minutes, the camera focuses on the two victims’ rebirth in the ocean with dissolves connecting each shot. Wei and Jie’s play in the water is split into seven shots. Their figures on the screen finally swim away, and the film’s final minute is comprised of a single shot on the
crystal-blue water, as beautiful as a dream. Like many films with the same motif, The
Best of Times gives its finale slow and romantic pacing. However, with its
protagonist-centered medium-paced chase sequences, it arouses the audiences’
sympathy of the two teens.
Chang’s films have one simple focus on these editing skills: Teenagers and their peers idling around cities, looking for the value of their existence. Such a narrative evinces the protagonists’ increasing awareness of the reality of life. Chang’s
characters are often simply hanging out, dining and drinking, quarreling and tussling,
observing what they perceive to be great apocalypses in their tiny lives. These themes are closely associated with Hou’s characters. David Bordwell says that “His [Hou’s]
modest technique suits an examination of the rhythms of everyday life. Hou has always been interested in how people grow up, break away from family, move to the city, find a job and a mate, get money legally or illegally, and have fun ”(Hou or Constraint,189). It is those most sensitive characters that “tend to be watchful observers who struggle to understand how distant, sometimes ominous, forces are shaping their lives” (Hou or Constraint, 190). Eventually, using their imagination, they find ways to compromise and survive. Chang has also cultivated a style that pares down narrative movement to a considerable degree, pushing instead toward a more fragmented episodic design. Chang’s films are compiled from episodes
depicting ordinary life, repeated daily events and common scenes. In these films, we see characters walking idly around the neighborhood, talking to each other about trivial topics, their families preparing food and dining together. The progression of the storylines lies beneath these daily details: the fights among family members and others, the departure and death of loved ones, and the imagined return of the dead.
This narrative structure gives the illusion of participation, whether for the actors who are involved in their ordinary routines, or for the audience. The perspective reflected in this kind of narrative structure, in other words, is both objective and subjective. The narrative is often propelled by voice-overs of the protagonists, which, combined with the action of the daily chores, presents a common experience wherein the audience can identify with the characters in the film. This approach to narrative structure favors
free association, thus liberating actors.
Chang also develops his films in other ways, using peculiar perspectives. His films concentrate less on what really happened than on how protagonists feel about what happened. For example, The Best of Times begins with the bored and hopeless Ah-wei providing the voice-over describing his own life and his cousin’s—one just bears it, while the other wants to make changes. In a sense, the plot is linear. At the same time, however, it seems recessive and repetitive, because similar scenes like family get-togethers keep recurring. Aside from the realist elements, Chang’s three films employ circular narrative structure in order to illustrate the anxious and repressed feelings of teenagers. They are not repressed because they overstep the boundaries of family ties, social mobility, security and religious values, but because they want to preserve these values. Chang portrays that the objective of social actors and institutions, including parents or companies in the capitalist world, is to take advantage of teenagers. Through careful juxtaposition, Chang shows how teens strive to create ideal lives. Chang’s preference for this counter-bildungsroman marks him as a speaker for these marginalized people. Feii Lu calls this directorial preference
“another cinema” (137-147).
Conclusion: A Familiar Genre in Alternative Production
Given the vitality of Chang Tso-chi’s films, there has been attention to his significance. Chang’s style is important in multiple aspects. This has become especially clear as his style has developed, and as his work has differentiated itself
from his mentor, Hou. Consciously or not, Chang distances himself from both Hou and a so-called modernist, detached style frequently seen in contemporary Taiwan cinema. This confirms how Chang Tso-chi remains one of the most radical and innovative directors in Taiwan today. In Taiwan, the concept of auteurism in film studies arose with the Taiwan New Cinema. The TNC movement gave birth to internationally recognized names including Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang. The TNC directors rejected old narrative formats, familiar formulae of mass production, and traditional Confucian cultural legacies. When Yeh and Davis argue about Tsai Ming-liang’s achievement in Taiwan film culture, they say that “if the New Cinema tried to liberate a suppressed linguistic and political minority, Tsai Ming-liang, as post-New Cinema, now resurrects a largely forgotten subculture” (249). Tsai, however, may not be the only person who has been obsessed with forgotten cultures, and the same observation can be made of Chang Tso-chi. To put it another way, what Chang represents is a film traditionlost in his generation.
In Key Concepts in Cinema Studies, Susan Hayward points out that art cinema predominantly refers to a certain kind of technically and thematically experimental European cinema. It “attempts to address the aesthetics of cinema and cinematic practices and is primarily, but not exclusively, produced outside dominant cinema systems” (8). Robert Phillip Kolker also says in The Altering Eye that an entire film history “could be written about the influences of European styles and their originators on American film, a history that, depending on one’s perspective, would show
Hollywood as either enriching or perceptually homogenizing itself” (5).64 In other words, in international art cinema, something different from the classic Hollywood style is demanded. However, even if the productions look different in theme and style, international art cinema was not purposefully created to counter Hollywood.
International art cinema is often connected with individual directors who innovate with directorial styles in order to mark the differences between their films.
Chang’s effort has been innovative, casting distinctive local material in a sophisticated modernist-realist shape. He has experimented with ambiguous time schemes and techniques canonized since the 1980s. As a direct image of
contemporary Taiwan, Chang’s films may not be as despairing as they first seem.
Though the teenage protagonists are trapped, Chang’s films tend to liberate audiences by means of his stylistic and thematic innovations. Like other international auteurs, Chang attempts to voice his own ideologies. In this sense, his creative schemes may be an indication that he has achieved his aims.
64 This study tries to search for another film tradition other than the American/Hollywood style. It is an attempt, an examination of convention and its response, of cinema used as a probe and the viewer as a co-worker in the field of meaning. It is a study of aesthetic history, with a nod toward economics and an emphasis on influences and changes, on a demand that cinema speak with its voice. Kolker in this book discusses individual figures and their films with movements and ideas, the history of film with works that make history. Kolker begins by studying Italian neo-realism’s development, and then turns to modernism. After realizing that “realism in art can only be achieved through artifice”, the history after neo-realism is the history of change and inheritance, examining how much overt recognition was given by filmmakers, by the films themselves, to the artifice that created the history that made it appear
“real” or as a commentary about “reality.”
Chapter 4 Conclusion
On the Waiting List of the Auteur
In Taiwan film history, the notion of the “auteur,” which usually refers to a director who creates critically-acclaimed films, has become controversial.
Unconventional stylistics in large part define the directors’ identity as an auteur. I have argued that the distinctive signature of Chang Tso-chi may lead the evaluation as both the offspring of Taiwan New Cinema masters, and innovation during his
formative years. With his goal of capturing vibrant contemporary elements in a realist/fantastic way, Chang Tso-chi’s efforts mark him as remarkable among his generation in Taiwan.
As I have noted, local-based themes were prominent in the Taiwan New Cinema in the 1980s, and Chang applied this thematic approach often in his films. The 1990s, however, with their rapid changes in both the cultural and economic fields, has witnessed the alteration of this approach in significant ways, and highlighted new concerns. We have seen, for example, that the income gap in Taiwan has grown dramatically, and beside the glamorous middle-class, which is often depicted in films reflecting modernity, there exists an under-privileged class suffering in silence. In the cultural construction of Taipei city, further, every economic, cultural and political element signifies bourgeois values. As a result, many marginal voices are distorted or silenced. Working within this new environment, Chang has been able to follow the
alternative and ideological leads of the TNC, and also express the compassionate concerns for his own generation. If contemporary Taiwan directors such as Tsai Ming-liang are interested in the middle-class’s reaction toward modernity, Chang turns his attention in an entirely different direction, one that focuses on the life of those who have been harmed or ignored in the midst of heated modern capitalistic competition. A closer inspection of Chang’s favorite imagery reveals that while his films may be gloomy in tone, they are definitely neither pessimistic nor hopeless.
Chang creates many violent and tragic scenes in his films, but he also comes up with an abundance of poetic imagery symbolizing hope and peace. The juxtaposition of the gutter imagery with the ocean imagery in The Best of Times illustrates this particular point.
Chang’s works express intelligence, creativity and humane compassion, and deserve critical attention. Darkness and Light (1999) and The Best of Times (2002) evince a combination of reality and fantasy that implies a director who is not afraid of appearing bizarre. Those who profess to find them no more than coarse and
old-fashioned are perhaps nervously separating themselves from the gritty reality of Taiwan.
To a large extent, Chang’s creativity is more than an attempt to underscore the problems in Taiwan’s modernization. James Udden writes that “[o]ne flaw with the auteur theory is the tendency to look only for consistent themes and stylistic note emerging in an industrial morass.” It may be limited in scope if we consider that
“[a]ny changes discovered have to fit within a discernible progression or pattern of
development” (2007, 200).65 So this is exactly Chang’s significance: he follows Hou Hsiao-hsien’s lead, but creates a distinctive body of films with his own signature, and is therefore recognized as the leading transformation of “another cinema,” which the Taiwan New Cinema wished to create. His works exemplifies how a self-aware auteur may be willing to go beyond his background and be the originator of a new tradition.
That is to say, an “auteur” is willing to change.66 Udden concludes for us in a direct way: “what is remarkable about places like Taiwan,” he writes, “is that streak of adaptability and flexibility that has served them so well.” (2007, 200) As a grassroots director, creativity is the way Chang has created echoes of the Taiwan-ness he has inherited from his predecessors.
A Modernist-Realist
Artistic, thematic and ideological changes, which have been adapted from films made from the TNC, have led to transformations into new introspective perspectives.
On the surface, the cinematic innovations nowadays bear little resemblance to their
65 Scholars like David Bordwell push formal analysis to their utmost. In On the History of Film Style, Bordwell examines the history of how directors strive to improve a previous age’s style. The way the director presents his work is called his “style.” Bordwell tries to determine the continuity and improvement of composition and other techniques in film history. According to him, the history of composition and depth staging (and similar visual elements) intersects with the histories of technology and the history of production practice. In a sense, directors push the film history further with the problem-solving mind.
66 Textual analysis, as a result, serves little other than visual stylistics. Shen Xiao-yin argues that explaining films through a textual analysis consciousness is not enough. She says that while studying films we should be conscious of the interaction between works, audiences and history. Sometimes the author is trying to say something more than that which is presented. Hou’s films, for example, evince more THAN just a certain consciousness but instead try be close to the reality of history. For more information, see “ 本來就該多看兩遍,” Xiao-yin Shen.
ancestors, although they may be haunted on indistinct levels by what has been called historical heritage. Since cine-modernism largely depends on how it looks at and
interprets cultural heritages, post-TNC directors, who have suffered from the decline
of the Taiwan local film industry, have embodied different transformations to survive.
The expression “modernism in cinema” includes various versions of historical film classics. These classics, especially those of Italian Neo-realism and the French
The expression “modernism in cinema” includes various versions of historical film classics. These classics, especially those of Italian Neo-realism and the French