There are coming-of-age stories and then there are personal epics. A Brighter Summer Day—inspired in part by director Edward Yang’s mid-century youth in Taiwan, after his family had left mainland China at the end of the Chinese Civil War—counts as the latter.
Although it covers a short season in the life of Xiao Si’r (Chang Chen), a quiet middle schooler who drifts into delinquency (and worse), A Brighter Summer Day sees him so fully and makes room for so many of the crucial figures in his life that we feel as if we know this community intimately when the nearly four-hour film is over. What’s going on in the background is seismic—Si’r’s middle-class family is trapped between the Communist and Nationalist forces vying for dominance in the region—yet this is also the story of the roiling struggle for identity that takes place within every adolescent’s heart.
Si’r mostly registers as an aimless, unremarkable kid (never mind that Chang Chen would grow up to be a dashing presence in films as varied as Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together, Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin). Not one to say much, Si’r will stand up for himself if pushed—against fellow students and teachers—which attracts the attention of the rougher kids at school, some of whom have connections to the rival gangs in the area. A burgeoning friendship with Ming (Lisa Yang), the teen girlfriend of the leader of one of the gangs, further complicates things, until Si’r finds himself trapped in a net made partly by his social situation and partly by his own impulsive choices.
Yang—who wrote the script with Hung Hung, Mingtang Lai, and Alex Yang—brings a preciousness to the proceedings that persists even as Si’r’s life becomes more and more precarious. There is nothing like nostalgia here, but in the quiet consideration of how these days actually passed—what was dear about them, what was dangerous, and what has been irrevocably lost since then—A Brighter Summer Day gives early teen life, in all its complexity, a burnished reverence. As in Yi Yi, Yang’s compositions are at once unostentatious and perfectly arranged. Often the camera is set back from the action, allowing characters to move in and out of the frame, almost as if they were on a stage. We watch from a circumspect perspective, yet one that is nonetheless warmly attuned to every nuance of these characters’ lives.
That includes, aside from Si’r, his father (Chang Kuo-chu), who is flummoxed by his son’s poor grades and behavior demerits, while facing his own struggles with the Nationalist police, who suspect him of Communist associations; Cat (Chi-tsan Wang), Si’r’s pipsqueak friend, who nonetheless has a big enough personality to front an Elvis cover band (Elvis songs are a throughline in the film, more so than a conventional score); and Ming, who has a wisdom about boys and girls well beyond her years, shared in a handful of heartbreaking monologues.
One of those monologues is delivered to Si’r late one night when he and Ming have snuck into the movie studio that’s next to their school. The lights are off, but Si’r uses a flashlight he has stolen from the set to bounce flickers of brightness around the room, occasionally on Ming. This is a recurring motif. Si’r has a habit of switching the lights on and off in rooms; at a local pool hall, the power routinely goes out, requiring candles to be lit; a deadly fight between the two gangs takes place mostly in the darkness, the unglamorous violence largely experienced as screams. Perhaps Yang employs this technique to suggest the struggle between the dark and light sides of ourselves, which is something we see in Si’r. Or maybe it represents the way these kids fumble about in dim adolescence, trying to find an identity of their own. There is a moment when Si’r is being reprimanded by a school administrator (again), while his father pleads his case, and the boy picks up a baseball bat and smashes a lightbulb hanging from a wire in the ceiling. It’s as if he’s turning the light out on his future self.
Si’r doesn’t directly express much throughout the film, but in moments like this we understand that he nonetheless feels deeply. This is never more clear than the movie’s standout scene, after tragedy has befallen Ming and, less profoundly, Si’r, and he chases her down the school’s halls. They stop in front of the school band, which is rehearsing their blaring instruments. Amidst the din, this quiet kid who has hardly said a word for two hours of screen time suddenly bursts out, “Don’t be afraid! You have to be brave! I’m with you. You needn’t be afraid. I’ll always be with you! I’ll be your friend forever. I’ll protect you.” The band pauses at one point and Si’r’s words can be heard loud and clear—a comic touch, yes, but also emblematic of the film’s care for him. While others in his life look past Si’r or fail to give him their full attention, A Brighter Summer Day is ready and waiting when he finally speaks. And the movie hears.
(5/29/2023)
