A City of Sadness: Hou Hsiao-hsien

Hou Hsiao-hsien's A City of Sadness isn't really about a story or the characters that populate it. Instead, it's a film about a pervading atmosphere of gloom, doom, and the inescapability of fate. It was the first Taiwanese film to openly address the KMT White Terror of the late 1940s. Therein lies its greatest strength and greatest weakness. Because it was the first film of its kind, its place as a classic of world cinema was assured. And Hsiao-hsien's trademark pacing, elliptical editing, and tightly controlled, mostly static frame compositions gave it a Taiwanese identity all of its own. But I wonder if Hsiao-hsien's decision to deal with the White Terror obliquely via the story of a family far removed from the immediate violence was the best decision considering its subject matter. There are occasional smatterings of political talk, but for the most part the White Terror is some kind of distant cataclysm that mostly only indirectly effects the family. The White Terror was a brutal military crackdown where 10,000-30,000 civilians were massacred during an uprising known as the 228 Incident. It was a Crime Against Humanity, plain and simple. But A City of Sadness, for all of its beauty, for all of its stylistic inventiveness, makes it seem like it was only a minor incident that effected only a handful of people.

7/10