A Brighter Summer Day


A Brighter Summer Day is a 1991 Taiwanese teen crime drama film directed by Edward Yang and is considered by most to be a masterpiece of contemporary cinema. The film is an extraordinarily large project for a Chinese-language film, not only for its duration of almost four hours, but also for its involvement of more than 100 amateur actors in different roles. The English title is derived from the lyrics of Elvis Presley's "Are You Lonesome Tonight?". The film was selected as the Taiwanese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 64th Academy Awards but was not nominated.
The film addresses a great array of human-centred themes such as the eager search for guidance during adolescence, the angst resulting from social detachment, the everyday hardships of parenthood, the pursuit of a satisfying individual and collective identity together with the ennui and frustration prompted by failing to do so, the volatility of young love and friendships, the self-aggrandising tendencies commonplace in teenage-made myths, and, especially, the fatal and irreversible consequences of an aimless life and a bewildering upbringing. Edward Yang also tackles highly sensitive political issues like the rise of Western culture to the detriment of Taiwan's traditions, the wide-spreading of unrest and violence stirred by socio-political uneasiness, the strained coexistence among social classes trying to deal with an uncertain future, the consequent yearn of migrating towards an expectedly-better country, and the proliferation of self-ruled quasi-political organisations as a way to substitute an unconvincing State.

Plot

In Taipei, a student in junior high, Xiao Si'r, fails a class and is forced to attend night school. This upsets his father, a career government worker, who is aware of the delinquency rampant among night school students and worries that it will affect Si'r. The next morning, Si'r and his father listen to a radio broadcast listing students accepted into various schools in Taipei.
A year later, Si'r, along with his best friend, Cat, is spying on the filming of a period drama in a movie studio. Caught by a guard in the rafters, they steal his flashlight and flee the studio, returning to their school. Si'r, noticing movement in a darkened classroom, turns on the flashlight and startles a pair of lovers, whose identities remain unclear. The film then proceeds to introduce two gangs of students, the Little Park Boys, the children of civil servants, and their rivals the 217s, the children of military officers. Si'r is not a member of either gang, although he is closer to the Little Park Boys. The Little Park Boys are led by Honey, who is currently hiding from police after killing one of the 217s over his girlfriend, Ming. Sly leads the gang in his absence. Sly and Si'r become rivals after Si'r gets Sly in trouble, believing him and his girlfriend, Jade, to be the pair of lovers he saw. Meanwhile, Si'r and Ming meet by chance and become friends.
Sly proposes a truce between them and the 217s, and arranges for a concert of Western pop music to be held with members from both gangs. Preparations for the concert appear to be going well until Honey, wearing the stolen uniform of a sailor as a disguise, unexpectedly resurfaces and berates Sly for setting up the concert; however, he realizes the gang respects Sly more. The night before the concert, Honey meets with Si'r, who he has taken a liking to, and "bequeaths" Ming to him, believing him to be a stable boyfriend. The following night, the concert is performed. An arrogant Honey appears outside of the concert hall, antagonizing the rival gang. Narrowly avoiding a beating, Honey takes an apparently friendly walk with the 217's leader, Shandong, only to be murdered when Shandong pushes him in front of an oncoming car. The Little Park Boys do not believe police reports that it is an accident, and plot revenge; they murder the 217s, including Shandong, during a typhoon, using weapons acquired by Ma, one of Si'r's wealthy classmates. Sly and the surviving Little Park Boys go into hiding. The same night, Si'r's father is arrested by secret police and questioned over his past, but is eventually freed, though he is fired as a result.
Si'r, meanwhile, has begun a relationship with Ming, and seems to be improving academically. However, she reveals to him her flirtations with other boys, including a much older doctor, which bothers Si'r. The next day, Si'r receives a demerit after lashing out at the doctor, and is expelled after a fit of rage as his father argues with the principal. Si'r promises to pass his transfer exams to get into day school, which upsets Ming, who knows that this means she will see him less. Later, Sly emerges from hiding and apologizes to Si'r for their past antagonism, and reveals that Ming and Ma are dating. Upset, Si'r, begins dating Jade, but he upsets her and she bitterly reveals to him that the girl he saw kissing Sly was Ming, not her.
After threatening Ma at the latter's home, an enraged and jealous Si'r steals Cat's knife and waits outside the school for Ma. Instead, he sees Ming, and berates her for her promiscuity, saying that only he and Honey had the ability to change her; she rejects this, saying that she cannot be changed and he is not special. He stabs her in a fit of rage and misery, then breaks down in crazed guilt. Si'r is arrested and held at the police station, where he screams for Ming. Si'r is sentenced to death, but the media controversy around the case provokes the sentence to be changed to 15 years imprisonment. The final scene is set in Si'r's house, now almost devoid of furniture. Si'r's mother is hanging up clothes to dry when she unexpectedly finds Si'r's school uniform. As she sobs into it, the radio starts to broadcast another list of distinguished students, mirroring the opening of the film.

Cast

Set in early 1960s, in Taipei, the film is based on a real incident that the director remembers from his school days when he was 13. The original Chinese title, 牯嶺街少年殺人事件, translates literally as "The Homicide Incident of the Youth on Guling Street", referring to the 14-year-old son of a civil servant who murders his girlfriend, who was also involved with a teenaged gang leader, for unclear reasons. The gang leader and girlfriend are involved in the conflict between gangs of children of formerly-mainland families and those of Taiwanese families. The film places the murder incident in the context of the political environment in Taiwan at that time. The film's political background is introduced in intertitles thus:
Chang Kuo-Chu, and his son Chang Chen are both cast in this film playing father and son.
Yang used the film Goodfellas as the model of a gangster movie.

Critical reception

The film received much critical acclaim and was awarded several wins in Golden Horse Film Festival, Asia Pacific Film Festival, Kinema Junpo Awards and Tokyo International Film Festival. Three different versions of the film were edited: the original 237 minute version, a three-hour version and a shorter 127 minute version.
A Brighter Summer Day is ranked as the 121st most acclaimed film ever and the most acclaimed from 1991 on the review-compiling list They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?. The film is currently in eleventh place on the Letterboxd Top 250 Movies list. On Rotten Tomatoes, the films holds a perfect rating of 100% based on 19 reviews, with an average score of 9.35/10. The site's critics' consensus reads: "A fantastic cinematic and artistic achievement, Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day depicts youth, ideals, violence and politics in a melancholic, tender light, culminating in a complex portrait of Taiwanese identity."

Themes

According to film critic Godfrey Cheshire, the film has "two faces, just as it has two titles" due to the sudden change of plots the film experiences halfway through its running time. A Brighter Summer Day notoriously shifts from a fraught, violent story about teenage gangs to a more introspective and family-oriented movie where the main character passively witness how his father is accused of espionage, his brother is in huge debt and his mother suffers in silence. Cheshire explains this transition of "faces" as it follows:

Restoration and home media

In 2009, the World Cinema Foundation issued a restoration of A Brighter Summer Day, using the original 35mm camera and sound negatives provided by the Edward Yang Estate.
On December 17, 2015, The Criterion Collection announced the official North American DVD and Blu-ray release of a new 4K digital restoration of the film in its original running time. This release marks the first time A Brighter Summer Day is released on home video in the United States, after more than two decades of obscurity due to difficulty in finding an official copy of the film. The release includes a new English subtitle translation, an audio commentary featuring critic Tony Rayns, an interview with actor Chang Chen; Our Time, Our Story, a 117-minute documentary from 2002 about the New Taiwan Cinema movement, featuring interviews with Yang and film-makers Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang, among others; a videotaped performance of director Edward Yang's 1992 play Likely Consequence; an essay by critic Godfrey Cheshire, and a 1991 director's statement by Yang.