Edward Yang's "A Brighter Summer Day" is an enormous film, not only in length but in its ambitious attempt, through homing in on a particular group of people in a specific time and place, to define the attitudes of a nation undergoing an identity crisis. The time is the early '60's, the place a suburb of Taipei, the characters mostly groups of adolescents. Like his great fellow compatriot Hou Xiaoxian, Yang hurls happenings at you without explaining who is who. He makes an enormous demand on his audience in forcing us to make all the connections. As his cast here runs into dozens and many scenes take place in semi-darkness, it is far from easy, particularly for a Western viewer to whom so many Orientals look alike, to make these connections on a first viewing. Indeed I would say that after four viewings I am still working out who is who. That I have not given up and am still in the process of unravelling can only be ascribed to a gut reaction from the first that this is a work of tremendous integrity and skill. The film deals mainly with gang warfare between rival groups of youngsters, which, it is suggested, reflects their search for identity at a time when their parents have lost theirs after years of Japanese occupation followed by the post-revolutionary separation from their Chinese mainland roots. As a diversion from gang warfare some of the youngsters find an outlet in American music, particularly the songs of Elvis. The film mainly follows the course of one boy, S'ir, as he moves from early to late adolescence. There are others who are presented as having a stronger sense of character; Ma, the "General's son" for instance who lives in a household a cut above the rest and Honey, a young man in a sailor suit, who exudes a sense of honesty and authority that holds the others in thrall. But it is S'ir whom the film doggedly follows, S'ir who seems to possess nothing much more than a bad temper and a developing desire, perhaps mainly through peer pressure, to have a young girl who will be faithful to him. It is his frustration in trying to achieve this that leads the film towards a climax that is as ugly as it is tragic. However, not before we have lived through a number of scenes that are wholly remarkable, none more so that a savage attack between rival gangs, some resorting to samurai swords - a reaction perhaps to their parents' detestation of all thing Japanese - which takes place in semi-darkness in a powercut during a tropical storm; the very stuff of late Goya, merciless and unblinking.
