Today, the podcast does something different. In this episode, we are looking at a film. And not just any film. It is perhaps the greatest film ever made. Yi Yi or A One and a Two is the magmum opus of Edward Yang, the Taiwanese filmmaker. We are going to explore the symbolism of balloons, sticks and condems in this amazing film. 

The Scene from the Film Discussed in the Podcast (in Chinese):

If you want to rent or buy the Film in English:

Podcast Transcript (AI Generated):

My name is Lee Moore, and this is the Chinese Literature Podcast. I know, it’s been a while. Sorry about that. I just today finished my  Taiwan chapter for the book that I’m working on, China’s Backstory, and so I finally allowed myself to get back to it. to the podcast. Hopefully it won’t be this long again, but we’re back with the Chinese literature podcast.

Well, today we are going to be pushing the boundaries of that word, literature, because  in this podcast, we are going to talk about a film. Now I know most of y’all would say that a film is not a work of literature. Ah,  but here is the thing. In most literature departments in America, that is not true anymore.

We use the word text to describe anything. It might be a written text, but you can also talk about a filmic text. That’s just a fancy word for a movie, though we’re not allowed to say the word movie in literature departments. That’s verboten. It’s very Declassé.  You can talk about a painting as a text. You can talk about a propaganda poster that has elements of painting and some elements of written work also can be a text.

We can analyze all of these things in the literature department. Those today are considered literature. I know that sounds strange. That’s how I’m kind of making this theoretical leap here. This Podcast, even though today we’re discussing a film. So Does film fit within the ballywick of the Chinese literature podcast?

Kind of. I’m going to say yes, but also I will wait to hear back from listeners. If there’s this big rebellion, don’t ever do another movie again. I don’t want to hear, I won’t do it again.  If y’all like it, you know, if you send me an email saying, Hey, that was actually a pretty cool discussion. I will try and do that a little bit.

I think I’ve told y’all this, I taught Chinese film first as a TA for many years, and then last year I taught Chinese film as a, an adjunct professor. So I have a lot of things to say about, about films. Okay, enough preliminaries. What film are we actually going to be talking about? Appropriately, I have selected a film that, in my humble opinion, may be the greatest film ever.

ever made. Not the greatest Chinese language film ever made. The greatest of all time. The goat, in the parlance of our times.  The film’s Chinese name is Yi Yi. In English, it’s often translated as a one and a two,  although that’s not really a great translation. In truth, it’s hard to translate the title.

Literally, it means something like one, one. And when written out in Chinese, the numeral one is just a, Straight horizontal line, so there’s this mystical quality to the name. It almost looks like the start of one of the hexagrams from the I Ching, that book of Chinese fortune telling that still captivates readers in the West.

So, the title is hard to translate. That is not nearly as hard as trying to explain what makes this film such an amazing movie.  I almost said movie. Did you hear that?  So what is this film about? I don’t even know how to explain the topic that this film takes on. It’s about life. But that’s not really good.

That’s the worst answer one could possibly give because what film is not about life? And yet, When you watch it, you’ll realize that’s exactly what this film is about. You know, if  I were to give you specific examples from this film, every example that I would give would just seem unremarkable. There is a boy in an elementary school in Taipei.

He likes to take photos of the backs of people’s heads.  There is a grandmother. She collapses into a coma early in the film. And the family, who is the main subject of the film, become the main.  are all drawn from this family, the Jian family.

Almost all of the film, having people from this family talk to her while she’s in a coma. So those examples just don’t seem interesting. But when I teach this film, I still have students go, Yeah, you are right. That is the greatest film ever. Of course, I have plenty of students who say they hate it. It’s too long.

It’s too boring. All valid criticisms. It is a very long film. It’s almost three hours long. Too boring. There’s no explosions really. There’s one murder that I’m not going to tell you too much about. Cause I don’t want to spoil it for you,  but for the most part, it’s very mundane.  And yet. Every time I teach it, I’m still able to get students to go,  That film was really awesome.

Which is remarkable, because like I said, it’s a three hour long film, and students today do not like to sit through anything that’s longer than a short Disney film. Okay, let me just sketch a brief outline of what this film is. So, E. E. is directed by Edward Young. Edward Yang is born in Shanghai in 1947.

His family flees the communist and they make it to Taiwan. He’s one of the members of Taiwanese society.  That’s really the, the privileged elite, uh, the mainlanders in Chinese, they would be called Wai Zheng Ren. Uh, he grew up in Taipei. He went to the university and studied electrical engineering. He comes to the United States.

He goes to the university of Florida. Let’s Not hold anything against him. For those of y’all who don’t know, I’m a Georgia fan, and Florida and Georgia are rivals.  Young goes to Florida. He studies engineering there. He dabbles in film a little bit while he’s in the United States. He’s at USC, the University of Southern California’s film school, a bit.

It’s one of the best film schools in the world. Yang gets accepted into Harvard to be an architect. He doesn’t go, thank goodness. I don’t know why he doesn’t go, but I’m very happy he didn’t go. He works in the tech industry in Seattle for a bit. Yes, there was a tech industry in Seattle before Amazon. And then he returns to Taiwan and he gets involved in film there.

A young dies of cancer at the age of 59 in 2007.  He’s part of what came to be called the Taiwanese new wave cinema. Some famous members of that are Huo Xiaoxian, Taiming Liang. Edward Yang made some of these Taiwanese new wave films. This is his most famous film. This particular film, Yi Yi, won numerous awards.

It was awarded the best film at Cannes in 2000. The Village Voice, the influential New York newspaper, called it the third best film of the 2000s. After this film came out, Yang became highly regarded by film connoisseurs. The actual DVD sold out. that you can buy is from the Criterion Collection.

Criterion is just a company that’s kind of become the arbiter of great films in the world. Of course, Edward Young is not the only one who’s famous in this film. Uh, there is another man in this film. His name is N. J.  His real name is Wu Nianzhen. He’s oftentimes just referred to in real life as NJ. The name of the character that he plays is NJ.

Of course, he has a different last name because it’s the Jian family. So it’s Jian NJ. But NJ is his name in the film. The characters in the film all refer to him as NJ. So it kind of comes to seem like a film more about him than some of the other characters. Though really, it’s about him. This entire family.

So NJ is a famous Taiwanese actor and director He’s an actor in this film, but also in the City of Sadness Another famous Taiwanese film  if I do more films for the podcast, I could talk about that film But honestly, I find that film a little boring but boring for everyone Interesting reasons? Hey, I can’t believe I just said boring for interesting reasons.

Okay,  so NJ is a famous Taiwanese actor and director. He’s also a screenwriter for a film called Sandwich Man, a film that’s based on a Huang Chunming story. Huang Chunming is another famous Taiwanese writer. I don’t think we’ve done him on the podcast, but I’ve got a couple of stories that I want to do on the podcast for him.

So, what is this film, Yi Yi, about? This film follows the lives of this upper middle class family in Taipei around the turn of the millennium. There’s NJ, we already talked about him, he’s the dad, there’s Min Min, the mom, Yang Yang is the five year old boy, Ting Ting is the high school aged daughter, Ah Di is Min Min’s brother, and