Author: Yuval Klein
Title Image: Noa Havilio
Yi Yi (“A One and a Two”) is a singular cinematic experience, an intimate family saga that assiduously portrays the at times disparate and at times interwoven lives of the Jian family. It effortlessly balances the narrative pendulum of the localized and the universal, allowing it to resonate with a broad global audience. Picturesque frames seamlessly move through the lives of fully-realized characters, each of which are at some sort of junction in their lives. Yi Yi is the culmination of an incredible filmography by the late Taiwanese auteur Edward Yang, his last work before dying at the age of 59 from colon cancer. The observations that I will presently relate can be read by those familiar and unfamiliar with Yi Yi alike, but I highly suggest seeing it first. Only then, return to this article with a desire to be further immersed in the film's revelatory impression of life.
The film opens with a wedding in which all of the Jian family are present. A clever narrative arc is thus established: The protagonists are all together in the beginning; then pulled apart, wandering about their own dispersed lives; and in the final scene, they all converge once again in another major ceremony. In the first scene, a melancholic soundtrack composed by the writer-director’s wife Kaili Peng textures a series of mundane but revealing interactions between the soon-to-be beloved protagonists. There is Yang-Yang, a thoughtful young boy presently being hassled by his female peers. While gathering for a photograph, they teasingly tap him on the shoulder then avert their gaze, which prompts Yang-Yang to look back in pursuit of a perpetrator to no avail. His head turns foreshadow his obsession with sight, specifically concerning what is behind one’s line of sight. It also showcases his youthful curiosity and naivete.
There is also Yang-Yang’s uncle (his mother’s brother) Ah-Di, a hapless young man who is marrying a visibly pregnant wife. Though neither shrewd nor generous, like all the characters, he is ultimately sympathetic because of the multitudes that he contains and the intimate ways in which they seep through to the audience. The major point of conflict in the wedding is when his ex-girlfriend Yun-Yun enters the reception in order to deviously apologize to his mother (Yang-Yang’s grandmother) for not marrying Ah-Di. She is led out, yelling vicious slurs at the impregnated mistress-turned-wife. It’s an interesting scene for a number of reasons. First of all, it creates yet another parallel between the first and last scene. In both major ceremonies, Yun-Yun is raucous and hysterical, having to be placated by the surrounding attendees. Perhaps more interestingly though, her appeal to an unresponsive grandmother is emblematic of the futility of recapturing what is lost and whitewashed by the passing of time. This is a motif throughout the film, most notably in the NJ and Sherry subplot.
Another momentous point in the film’s arc is the fortuitous meeting between NJ and Sherry, which relates to many of the later scenes in subtle and overt ways alike. NJ is Yang-Yang’s father, an intelligent, laconic businessman who is increasingly frustrated with his colleagues and the company they share. By the elevator, returning to the wedding reception after a stint in a nearby McDonalds with Yang-Yang, NJ encounters a relic of his past, Sherry, his first and possibly only love. Living in Chicago with a wealthy American husband, she was unaware of his whereabouts before happening upon him that moment; she hadn’t heard from him since he abruptly stood her up thirty years ago, consigning her to indignant oblivion. The interaction is fractured into two parts: 1. An amiable reunion between two affectionate parties, and 2. Sherry’s subsequent return, in which she berates him for abandoning her. It is a layered scene, not only because of Sherry’s dual personas, but also the use of an elevator. NJ is bracing to leave her, but while the elevator has yet to arrive, she has a few fleeting moments to approach him. There is also an interesting interplay between the other characters in the scene. When the elevator finally arrives, a mutual friend alights, hence adding another dimension to the scene. The cream on top of the coffee, so to speak, is Yang-Yang. He is a manifestation of time’s passing, highlighting the unbridgeable distance between their lives. After observing the interaction closely, he proceeds to symbolically emulate his father in the next scene; he runs towards his female tormentors with a heart shaped balloon and bursts it with a needle. They are caught off guard and begin to cry. Later, we learn that although NJ was passionately in love with Sherry, he also harbored a lot of resentment towards her. Yang-Yang internalized the vengeful impulse towards his female counterparts that NJ unsheathed during his distant youth. Upon returning from the reception, the Jians learn that the grandmother has been hospitalized.
The grandmother suffered a stroke between the ceremony and reception, having previously been driven home by NJ and Ting-Ting (his daughter). Ting-Ting was taking out the trash, a chore she was supposed to have done earlier, while her grandmother writhed in the adjacent room unbeknownst to the audience nor the protagonists. By being inattentive to her chores and her grandmother’s whereabouts, she has inadvertently wrought a tragedy. Because of this, Ting-Ting carries a lot of guilt throughout the film. Is she justified in feeling ashamed for something that is only tangentially related to her actions? Intent is usually the schema with which this question is approached, but I find her remorse to be a legitimate and selfless response to the suffering of others. Although she isn't at fault, it’s healthy to sometimes interrogate how one has affected other people, whether that be advertently or inadvertently. That is the difference between empathy and conscientiousness; the latter is practical, the previous is more profound. This scene is the through point to another development in Ting-Ting’s life; while disposing of the garbage bags she encounters her new neighbor, Lili, with her rather slim boyfriend nicknamed “Fatty.” She peers atop her balcony, observing them tongue-tied beneath a bridge.
Following the hospital visit scene, Min-Min, the mother of the Jian household and daughter of the incapacitated matriarch, seeks spiritual guidance from her colleague’s Buddhist master. It is a good companion piece to the moments previously described because they all highlight the theme of transitions across generations. In only twenty minutes, the audience is provided a meaningful glimpse into the Jian household in its entirety. The resourceful use of time and space throughout the film makes it feel miraculous. I’ll briefly recapitulate the metamorphoses underwent by the Jian household thus far: Little Yang-Yang learned to emulate his father’s masculinity; the adolescent Ting-Ting found her path towards romance, friendship, and adulthood; the young Ah-Di has been bound to a child, wife, household, and the attached responsibilities, all of which warrant a level of maturity he must acclimate to; NJ rediscovered his former lover, experiencing how time has transformed their relationship; the mother underwent a spiritual awakening; and the grandmother goes from aging to moribund.
Rather than following the intricacies of the film’s narrative thread, I will analyze the film character by character. First of all, there’s Yang-Yang, a wonderful character who is brimming with vitality, sensitivity, sincerity, and brilliance. He is attuned to his surroundings in a way that resonates with how I remember my childhood. Rather than simply being an adorable side character or some sort of prism through which to see the adults, he lends immensely to the depth of the story and its philosophy. The combination of infantility and ingenuity that he embodies often creates humor. For example, there is a scene towards the beginning of the film in which Yang-Yang is sitting on his desk when his teacher suddenly accuses him of bringing a condom to school. Many of his classmates are more physically precocious than him and they chuckle as little Yang-Yang is called “shameless” by this clueless adult. The teacher’s banal interrogation is continually punctured by Yang-Yang’s Rashomon-esque retorts on the teacher’s insufficient grasp of truth. How can you know if something is true if you can’t see it? This is Yang-Yang’s most obsessive thought, one relevant to Edward Yang’s craft as a filmmaker. In fact, this obsession eventually leads the character to a similar medium: photography, channeling a uniquely [Edward] Yang-like humanism. The classroom scene ends with the teacher removing a condom-covered balloon from his pocket; the smirks of his peers yield to outright laughter. Yang-Yang is flustered. The teacher is so intent on eliciting a pungent blend of deference, remorse, and humiliation in his students that he fails to teach Yang-Yang why bringing a condom to school is a taboo, and of course, what a condom is. The paradigmal case of a strict teacher discipling an insolent student who needs rigid molding often serves as a framework for teacher-student interactions. It is unnurturing and rather hostile towards Yang-Yang, hence the reputation he acquires as a troublemaker; through sheer inquisitiveness and authenticity, he transgresses classroom norms, thereby challenging the teacher’s sense of order.
A fixation with sight as well as a burgeoning romantic fascination with girls can be understood as the defining motivators of Yang-Yang's character development. Most of his erratic behavior can be understood through the sight fixation. For example, he refuses to talk to his grandmother because she can’t see. A more subtle instance is when he hides the phone underneath the couch’s seat cushion. Yang-Yang wants to transcend the constraints of subjectivity, unsettled by the thought that ‘we can only know half of the truth’ because of our inability to see behind. The sophistication of this phrase is heightened by the preceding sequence of events and the ways in which they were shot. Min-Min laments the condition of her mother; through a mirror, her back can be seen. Suddenly, the camera cuts to a shot out of the window towards the new neighbors. The mother and her boyfriend are yelling violently at one another over an incident of alleged infidelity. Mostly obscured by the window curtain, the frame is full of shifting, nondescript headlights moving through a succession of highways. Their shouting still lingers as the camera observes NJ and Min-Min through their window. Then, the curtains close, and we are left in an impersonal abyss of urbanity, a landscape that reveals glimmers of granular, obscure lives suspended in a vast darkness. The next morning, NJ and Yang-Yang await alongside the jilted neighbor for the elevator. She averts her gaze only for Yang-Yang to maneuver around her in order to catch a clear glimpse of her face. On the way out, NJ tells him that staring is rude, to which Yang-Yang responds, “I wanted to know why she’s unhappy.” His father was unaware of her mental state. Yang-Yang’s intrusiveness can be understood as a means of surpassing the conventions of urbanity in order to dismantle an architecture of disconnect.
To see more yields an elevated understanding of one’s surroundings. Yang-Yang’s photography exploits are motivated by a desire to capture the unseen and then disseminate it. He is also assuaged by the idea that no one will believe the things he tells them; the photograph portrays the indisputable truth in a way that his limited knowledge and subjectivity don’t. To Yang-Yang, the only thing that can give credence to a statement is an image. This idea is reminiscent of Ludwig Wittgenstein's in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Wittgenstein's litmus test for truth was whether a remark accurately describes an object’s appearance.
Surrounded by napping students, a stealthy, vigilant Yang-Yang is shown sneaking out of the classroom. Yang-Yang retrieves his now developed photos in a nearby shop, then proceeds to sprint through the school courtyard, a feat that is shown through the input of various security cameras. Then, he is caught by a group of older girls, who–in the next scene–partake in the teacher’s derisive quips about the photos. After an expression that the teacher interpreted as insolent, Yang-Yang is ordered to turn his back towards them and face the wall. The teacher is clearly discomfited by Yang-Yang’s gaze. The way in which Yang-Yang observes adults often makes them feel vulnerable, hence agitated. This is what his father warned him about after the incident with their neighbor. As well as acquiring an emotional unshacklement from Yang-Yang’s gaze, the teacher is also unwittingly exemplifying his failure as a teacher. Rather than embracing his student’s perspective and reinforcing his educational pursuits, he tries to make Yang-Yang stagnate in a role of submission, made to adapt his own myopic view of the school environment.
Yang-Yang sees the dissemination of photos as a means of imparting knowledge to the more educated adults around him; the shortcomings of language and sight are precisely the triumph of this medium. Whereas language inadequately conveys truth, the photo presumes a stature of objectivity; whereas sight cannot capture the area behind one’s back, the photo can. Yang-Yang’s second venture into photography concerns itself with the limitations of sight. Ah-Di is puzzled when handed a photo of himself from behind. Upon leaving the room, Yang-Yang says, “You can’t see it yourself, so I help you.” This relates to the director’s understanding of cinema.
Milan Kundera says that to read fiction entails suspending moral judgment (“Testaments Betrayed”). This does not mean that the novel is immoral, rather other-moraled–an exaltation of understanding over all else. In literature, as well as cinema, characters are truly accepted as others, as ‘autonomous beings grounded in their own morality…’ Judgment is only useful insofar as it is harnessed to mold the world according to moral judgment or to the betterment of oneself. A reader cannot not knead the dough, so to speak; only the author can, and a novelist, by definition, does not bear responsibility for a character’s thoughts and actions. I have invoked this particular passage because I think Edward Yang was making a compatible, if not similar, argument about the function of cinema; immersion in the characters' lives stimulate an undiluted, non-moralizing understanding of their environment, of a speckle in the Taipei horizon.
There is an older girl that Yang-Yang and his peers pejoratively refer to as “the concubine” because of her close relationship with the teacher. She–alongside a few other girls (that the teacher often keeps around…)–acts as a hallway monitor. The balloon motif returns when, in Yang-Yang’s ploy to retaliate against her for having brought him to the jurisdiction of his teacher, he and two friends push a hefty water balloon over a ledge towards her direction. In a slapstick twist, the teacher is hit. Running away from a victim drenched with water and contempt, Yang-Yang steers into the audiovisual class. The atmosphere suddenly shifts in an almost fantastical way. Enveloped in darkness, he can hardly be seen. Reverberating over images of weather, a thunderous female voice explains how clouds are formed through condensation, an allusion to the water balloon. Then, still over the grandiose reverberations, the door opens beside Yang-Yang. A faint light pours over him as the “concubine” passes by him. He is visibly awestruck by her, thrown into a sort of rapture, an awakening of romantic attraction. Adapting an almost surreal quality, her figure is superimposed, as if merging with the projection behind her. “That was the beginning of everything,” the narrator says, before the camera cuts suddenly to Ting-Ting standing beneath a white umbrella.
Ting-Ting is an affable adolescent girl, a sensitive, gentle person who, throughout the film, undergoes many intense experiences. As mentioned earlier, she feels responsible for her grandmother’s condition. However, there is another dominant and contradictory sentiment towards the hardship around her. Although her neglecting garbage duties and ogling her neighbor’s boyfriend contributed to the ongoing family tragedy, there is another potent force at work, about which she is acutely aware; Ting-Ting sees injustice as a ruthless perpetrator pervading into her most basic sense of order. She expends the recesses of her volition with grace, using kindness as a tool for the maintenance of world happiness. In her passage to adulthood, she is forced to confront the limitations of mundane and banal kindness. From a state of spiritual immiseration–the hollowing of her homey sanctuary–she develops resilience and maturity. Soon, I will describe how the boy embracing her neighbor at the time of the grandmother’s stroke becomes a counterforce that tries to pull her to the opposite extreme. That opposite is not necessarily evil; it is cynicism, individualism, and neurosis–but also, a morbidity that manifests itself in an act of depravity.
Ting-Ting purposely deprives herself of sleep in an irrational attempt to affect change on her grandmother’s situation, but her labors of love prove futile. In one scene, she refuses to go to sleep until her grandmother wakes up. This creates a juxtaposition of conditions: The grandmother is unable to wake up, while the granddaughter cannot sleep; one is in paralysis, morbidly stagnating–while the other is restless, in constant motion, navigating a period of great turbulence. Her fatigue from this ascetic abstention from sleep lingers into the classroom the next day. Like in Yang-Yang’s condom-balloon scene, she is shown amidst a backdrop of her peers. In both scenes, the teacher is distinguishing the protagonist from the rest of the class–but instead of cutting back and forth between student and teacher, perhaps tweaking the angle of the camera such that the authority figure assumes an augmented presence, the protagonists are instead shown alongside other students. Everyone in Ting-Ting’s all-girl class has plants–and with exception to Ting-Ting’s, they all have flowers. Ting-Ting finally resigns herself to sleep, becoming disengaged to the bemusement of the students and teacher. Referring to the difference between Ting-Ting and the rest of the class’ plants, the teacher quips, ‘The others must be slacking… See how they bloom.’ Ting-Ting wakes up to roaring laughter, feigning a smile. Most likely, the teacher said this sardonically, with a disparaging intent–but it can also be understood as emblematic of the way Ting-Ting overexerts herself to her own detriment.
Ting Ting doesn’t complain to anyone, reticent everywhere save for the helm of her grandmother’s bed. Unlike Yang-Yang, who refuses to interact with his grandmother due to her absence of sight, she gives the grandmother a sustained presence in her life. Towards the end, she finds her grandmother awake, in a blissful state of peace. Through the door slip, Ting-Ting eyes her, and draws herself forward. The grandmother’s gestures express affection and forgiveness in a way that soothes Ting-Ting, relieving her of the burden that prevented her from necessary, willful sleep. “Why is the world so different from what we thought it was?” From this place of uprootedness, a sense of relief alights. Ting-Ting shuts her eyes shut, nesting on her grandmother’s lap. Meanwhile, the flower on the plant beside her begins to bud ever so slightly. Though likely a dream or hallucination, it is an important event, a fleeting moment of shared reverie before the grandmother’s death-bound descent that very night.
Prior to the described scene, a lot happened to Ting-Ting. Her mother leaves for a religious retreat while her secular father travels to Japan for business, leaving her wholly responsible for herself. In that time, she begins to orbit her next door neighbor. In doing so, she experiences life in its entirety, a range of excitement and upheaval. Her neighbor, Lilli, is her age, a sort of “bad girl.” Though she embodies a spirit of rebellion, she has one major quirk: She is a disciplined cellist. Both mother and daughter resent each other for their common promiscuity, causing a dysfunction that entices Ting-Ting. At one point, she accompanies Lilli on a date while her mother is entering with a man. Her status becomes that of a voyeur–though in a way, she is experiencing the relationships vicariously through the neighbors, specifically the one with “Fatty,” who, I repeat, is rather skinny. At one point, she yells at him for not staying with Lilli. Then, when he is no longer able to be with Lilli, “Fatty” projects his feelings onto Ting-Ting. She immediately makes the shift from indirect to direct contact with the boy. That is, she feels flattered, prompting her to give in to him immediately.
On their first date, he takes her to a movie that she finds to be needlessly depressing. Through “Fatty,” Edward Yang seems to propagate his own, thought-provoking theory of cinema, one which justifies the violence and/or sadness in many films that some call gratuitous. “Fatty” says that movies are lifelike, hence must contain multitudes of happiness and sadness. In negation, Ting-Ting asks why, in that case, not just live life instead of having it mediated through the guise of film. Quoting his uncle, he responds that “We live three times as long since man invented movies.” This is because it gives us a wider range of experiences than regular life. He gives the example of murder, which gains an ironic dimension after he ends up killing someone. Also ironically, when seeing Yi Yi for the first time, I also felt that everything other than that development was necessary. I would venture to elaborate upon his uncle’s philosophy in stating that cinema allows ones’ line of sight to reach places it wouldn’t normally have access to. All cinephiles embody the spirit of Yang-Yang.
On their second date, they go to a chamber music concert. He is visibly moved, while she appears disinterested. He leads her to a motel, while she stands timidly beside him. She wears a white dress; he wears black attire. Sensing the rift between them, he is intimidated, and abruptly leaves the room. Soon after, she learns that “Fatty” and Lilli have been reunited. He is drawn to Lilli and Ting-Ting simultaneously just as he is drawn to a contempt for rules and the aesthetic beauty of virtue simultaneously. It can be understood as a Hegelian struggle of consciences, in which each character tries to assert itself over the other. He eventually gives in to his nihilistic impulses, but not before grappling with Ting-Ting and all the virtue she embodies one last time. Moments before making his life-altering decision, he approaches Ting-Ting. She offers him her friendship, which confuses him into a heightened contempt. He tries to bring her down to his level of cynicism, so as to disprove her philosophy of categorical imperatives that preclude the possibility of any nuance in depravity or any shortcomings to virtue. He knows that she won’t accept the monstrous act he is about to do–that he will lose her if he gives into Lilli’s desire to have her mother’s boyfriend, who happens to also be her English teacher, killed. Ting-Ting satisfies his conscience while Lilli satisfies his morbid infatuation with violence. He yells at her because he knows she won’t try to understand him like he would a movie protagonist. Like Kundera says, in fiction, there is a “suspension of moral judgment.” We can understand the nuances of a character without a desire to change them, but in real life, we are all interconnected, trying to stratify a world order with norms to be followed if we are to ensure safety for everyone involved. Empathy and individualism, therefore, must contend with morality.
NJ is a businessman trying to revitalize a failing software company in which he’s invested a lot of his career and much of his own money. He bonds with Ota, an eccentric Japanese CEO of a declining company that he and his partners want to purchase. Ota emanates a sincerity that infects NJ, leading him to start a new career. This reflects the director’s journey from computer engineering to filmmaking. In addition to erosion in the realm of work, residual feelings from his first love have resurfaced.
In a business trip to Japan, he spends most of his time with his ex-girlfriend, Sherry. In the first shot of Japan, Tokyo is shrouded in darkness around vast skyscrapers with mostly-lit cubicles. The transition from Taipei to Tokyo feels seamless, as though they are one. Perhaps, this is an allusion to the homogenizing force of modernity, the monotony it imposes; or maybe, it testifies to the universality of human stories, i.e. experiencing and revisiting first love; or, the similarity is owed to their shared history, Taiwan being a former Japanese colony.
A parallel is drawn between their reunion and Ting Ting’s first date. Cutting between the two, both father and daughter are shown pacing urban streets with their beloved. They plunge into the waters of infatuation and leave it with heartbreak in a synchronized manner. NJ and Sherry cover a range of emotions. At one point, NJ is again berated for abandoning her. We learn that NJ also incurred a lot of pain, a ghost with an enduring presence; she and her family pushed him towards a career that he resented, and some of the resentment poured over to her.
At the hotel, Sherry is reluctant to leave him. After talking and embracing passionately, they realize that their love for one another–one that may or may not be more profound than the sentiments shared with their spouses–cannot be manifested in their lives for longer than a fleeting rendezvous. To his surprise, NJ finds Sherry gone the next morning. Both father and daughter have been abandoned. This is followed by a pillow shot of clouds drifting just as lovers drift apart.
In the last scene, Yang-Yang delivers a moving speech addressed to his grandmother’s shrine. It speaks for itself, so here’s a transcription:
“I’m sorry, Grandma. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to you. I think all the stuff I could tell you, you must already know. Otherwise, you wouldn’t always tell me to ‘Listen!’ They all say you’ve gone away, but you didn’t tell me where you went. I guess it’s someplace you think I should know. But, Grandma, I know so little. Do you know what I want to do when I grow up? I want to tell people things they don’t know, show them stuff they haven’t seen. It’ll be so much fun. Perhaps one day, I’ll find out where you’ve gone. If I do, I can tell everyone and bring them to visit you. Grandma, I miss you, especially when I see my newborn cousin who still doesn’t have a name. He reminds me that you always said you felt old. I want to tell him that I feel I am old too.”