Hacker Cinema
Yi Yi
一一
2000 · Film · 174 min
Directed by Edward Yang
Each member of a family in Taipei asks hard questions about life's meaning as they live through everyday quandaries. NJ is morose: his brother owes him money, his mother is in a coma, his wife suffers a spiritual crisis when she finds her life a blank and his business partners make bad decisions.
2 positive1 neutralfrom 3 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
3 comments on Hacker News
Yi Yi (2000) https://letterboxd.com/film/yi-yi/
It features a middle-class family living in Taipei. Each of them at different stages of life. There is no central drama except that they are alive. It's a beautiful movie that makes you meditate on the human condition.
It's always nice to see a list which includes movies I haven't watched or heard of. Alas I suspect many are hard to find now, the streaming services don't show much interest in picking up the classics.
My sub-list:
Film I'm pleasantly surprised to see in the top 10: Mulholland Dr.
Film I'm not going to complain about: 2001. It's impact can't be denied even if the last bit drags
Film I'm happy to see recognized: Yi Yi
Films I found underwhelming:
-- Melancholia
-- Tree of Life
Films I'd forgotten about that I now have to watch again:
-- Dr. Strangelove
-- Playtime
-- Yi Yi
-- 8 1/2
Film I would have ranked higher: The Third Man
I'd love a good literature class where we intersperse classic and contemporary writing. Often times I wonder how much of the subtext I am missing due to my ignorance of the classics. It'd be a lot of fun to read some Ralph Ellison, then a Chang Rae Lee novel.
After all in film, an area I'm a little better with the classics (although not entirely—I have massive gaps), it's really fun to point out the allusions and inspirations. The deep focus multi-narrative comedy of errors that is The Rules of the Game begets the combinatorial explosion of country music that is Nashville begets the post modern family drama of Yi Yi begets the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Or how non-linear editing in Hiroshima, Mon Amour could lead to Petulia.