../a-confucian-confusion

A Confucian Confusion

At a glance...

It feels like a divine act predicted by The Great One himself that I would go visit my parents for the first time in 3 years a completely changed (medicated) woman, and then the first week back watch this movie. Edward Yang is just doing something for me, folks, in a way that so many contemporary films of the Chinese diaspora that I have seen have not. The signature interiority and interconnected blossoming of drama that thrives in Yi Yi also features heavily here. If you liked that one Every Frame a Painting video about the 2-shot, maybe give this movie a try since 90% of the conversations (which make up 90% of the whole movie) are shot in 2's.

As a caveat, I don't know what this will be like in terms of character density for audiences that do not have any familiarity with at least Mandarin Chinese (some characters also speak I think Hokkien in this film? It sounded not recognizable to me and I know that's another major language on the island). It's not as clean and spaced out like Yi Yi, living up to its name. Conversations are fast, the cuts go from one dramatic peak to the next, I think overall it gives a "sloppier" vibe. Think of the difference between delicately placed and framed sushi at an omakase vs your favorite beef noodle soup, filled with noodles and meat and vegetables. In both dishes there is an orchestration of the parts that warrants appreciation, but by the end of one you might feel a satisfying closing to a beautiful piece, and by the end of the other you might be covered in soup splatter after slurping and munching with carnal delight.

Onto why I love this movie. First point, I think women exist in this movie on a plane of existence that will make the default western audience member uncomfortable (or at least annoyed). The worst kind of mentally ill woman is the one who knows she's crazy and takes it as a dare to be even more bold and more mentally ill. I, personally, aspire to be such a woman. This movie has these characters in spades, with Molly in particular reminding me so much of the worst of my bipolar disorder. When she wants connection she lashes out instead, criticizing, thoughtlessly disagreeing, sometimes even violently hitting the other person. She is exactly the kind of character that would lead a weak audience goer to quip, "I didn't like that annoying lady who didn't just shut up and do her job good!" I love that this movie doesn't let men have a superpower of monologuing through their juvenile insights about the world (and women) and then it just be a thing everyone believes and is okay with. So many times in this movie a dude is just talking for so long and at the end of it is a woman who just completely refuses to accept the basic principal of the statement from 50 seconds ago.

God, the fights in this movie are so good. If you have ever sat at a dinner table and listened to 2 other people fight, and the fight doesn't involve you so it becomes this spectator event, and if you've gone through that and kind of enjoyed it, this movie will feed that hunger in your guts for that sort of thing. I bet writers Edward Yang and Hung Hung were really good at arguing with their spouses, or at least their parents. People weaponize the things the other person said in this with all the technique of a kung-fu master, catching verbal arrows and throwing them back recklessly. It might feel exhausting for some, but for me it was just so entertaining because most of the characters are not completely in the right or wrong. And in fact, if you have familiarity with the Chinese concept of saving face, you will deeply appreciate how exhausted all these young people are at keeping up appearances and lying to others constantly.

And that's another great thing about this film: the characters span many young people of different genders and backgrounds with various white-collar jobs. Some parts are a little too Taiwanese nouveau riche to really relate to, but there's just something about taking the setting of the same introspective, characterful drama we've come to expect from Chinese diasporic filmmaking out of the family and into the workplace. And by taking the winning method and setting it in a new place, we get some genuinely beautiful insight into characters lesser writers would pigeonhole into their own humiliating self-flanderization for cheap comedic impact. Akeem's whole ark in this film, from sniveling rich boy to still sniveling but realizing there is room for himself in his own life honestly felt poetic to me. It is exactly the kind of magic I remember feeling the first time I watched other movies by Edward Yang.

This movie is not perfect. It is honestly confusing at first because so many people are introduced so quickly that I genuinely have no idea how easy it is to dive in to if you aren't like me and can't also listen to the Chinese and glean at least some meaning to pick up on things. You'll just have to tell me if that's you and you watch this movie how it went for you. There is a little hint of queerbaiting in this film and I wish that Yang had the guts to just full-on make Molly a bisexual and turn this soup into a stew. But also, this is just so much fun to watch. Shooting so many scenes on 2's means Yang has to find ways of introducing interest into these lingering conversations. Maybe the best of the bunch is an encounter that's happening at a bar where an arcade machine suddenly makes a loud noise right as the character makes a good point. I laughed a lot at that. Ah, it's just so cool to watch these people act on a long take where the camera just holds. That's something consistent I see in all of Yang's work I've watched. He is not afraid of letting the camera sit there and have the environment do the talking. If I wanted to make a video essay about this movie I might just do a cheap knock-off of EFaP and cut my favorite 2-shot's together. I'm sure someone else has done that but it just seems like it would be fun.

Would love to watch this one again now that I've got the characters figured out so I could catch up on some details I'm sure I missed the first time. This was really fun! So different from Yi Yi and A Brighter Summer Day but also so similar where it really counts.

/1994/