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2001 / Taiwan=NHK / Color / 100min.
* 2002 Venice Film Festival Nominated in Competition
* 2002 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival
Best Picture, Best Taiwanese Film of the Year, Viewer's Choice Award
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[SYNOPSIS]
Xiao Uei has a beautiful face. He is a hoodlum but always cares about Ming. Ming is his twin sister, and is terminally ill with cancer. She is told that her days are numbered, so returns home from a hospice to stay with her family and await her death. She is Xiao Uei's dearest relative. In front of an aquarium, Ming recalls the time when she dived into the sea with her former lover, Ah Che, and handled tropical fish. She broke up with him half a year ago when she found out about her illness.
Ah Chien spends days, either dealing with tradesmen, or welcoming and sending off deities at a temple fair for a small religious group his relative organizes, because he has nothing else to do. Playful Xiao Uei is popular among his buddies, but often runs into troubles and fights.
Xiao Uei and Ah Chien live in the same housing complex, and get along well with each other despite their different home environments. One day, a hoodlum convinces Xiao Uei to join a mafia organization, and they decide to join. Xiao Uei and Ah Chien gain the mafia boss's favor, and they are given guns, which encourages them to start breaking out of bounds. However, they happen to shoot the boss from another mafia group in the course of exacting debts, and have no choice, but to run away.
Xiao Uei visits Ah Che, his sister's ex lover, who runs a cheap hotel. Inside the aquarium at the hotel swim the same tropical fish, exactly the same type as those at his place. The two boys head off to the sea with Ah Che during the night, but Xiao Uei starts vomiting, and gives a sharp cry. Around the time Xiao Uei visits a clinic, Ming passes away. The following morning, Xiao Uei is sitting numbly on a bed in a hotel room. His family's voice is heard through the handset, telling him that Ming has died... The two remain wordless on a train.
They stand silent in an old alley. Many members of the mafia group whose boss they shot are there to confront them. They run fast and hard, but the sound of beating up is heard as we hear a scream. Ah Chien falls down, stabbed. Xiao Uei stands helplessly, with a pathetic look.
The following day, Xiao Uei heads off to seek revenge, but soon returns home, wounded. To his surprise, he sees Ah Chien sitting on the long alley he always passes. Xiao Uei calls out Ah Chien, and they run along the alley again. They look back, breathless in an open space, and find that their enemies are after them again. They run fast, and dive into a black ditch. Xiao Uei is vomiting bitterly with his eyes closed. He suddenly hears Ah Chien's voice. "What's this! Where are we, Xiao Uei?!" As Xiao Uei opens his eyes, he sees colorful tropical fish in the water. It is the familiar scene he remembers from the aquarium at his home. They look at each other, and smile. They breathe. It is a beautiful moment of juvenescence, unforgettable for both Xiao Uei and Ah Chien...
Sozo Teruoka(Film Critic)
Beautiful Times Beyond Darkness and Light
Judging by the main characters' professional set-up, the film could strike us as a story about hoodlums. Xiao Uei and Ah Chien are cousins. They lead hopeless and helpless lives like sewer rats living in the underworld. Moreover, Xiao Uei's twin sister lives on borrowed time. However, once they set foot in the underworld, they are soon viewed with awe, and this fact encourages them to let out their pent-up frustrations. They gradually end up being deeply involved with the mafia.
However, what we see on the screen is unlike any other hoodlum films. Director Chang Tso-Chi never fails to imply there is always a tender thread of light from another world, the ray of hope that shines on the harsh and hopeless formal society. Such 'light' does not however originate in the mafia society. The light comes, for instance, from, the aquarium with tropical fish that appears at the beginning of the film.
The sweet recognition that a dark and harsh worldly life always has its brighter side in which places and people are blessed with shining light is notably observed in Chang Tso-Chi's works, which characteristically depict people living underground, particularly in his last film, "Darkness and Light". The paradoxical juxtaposition of 'light' in 'darkness' directly represents his recent worldview.
The most 'beautiful time' in "Darkness and Light" is the final scene-the moment when fireworks fill the sky in the background as we see the grief-stricken heroine, who has lost her beloved father and boyfriend. The director skillfully constructed the scene by capturing the fireworks seen through the windows of the heroine's home, not just the fireworks alone in the sky. This scene strikes me as even more interesting after I have seen "Beautiful Times". It is because the origin of the splendid and happy light depicted as belonging to the world beyond the darkness that covers the front half of the scene divided by the window frame. The light inside the aquarium and tropical fish, symbolic of light, depicted in this film, is also implied as light that only shines beyond the 'frame', just like the fireworks seen beyond the window frames.
The aquarium is not the only thing symbolic of light. In fact, there are hardly any 'beautiful' scenes in "Beautiful Times". On the contrary, ordinary, narrow, dim and shabby locations are perhaps intentionally selected for the film. Nonetheless, something divine and a sense of liberation that implies brightness of the outside unlike cooped-up feelings fill many scenes throughout the film. The tropical fish reflecting the light beyond the aquarium, like the fireworks beyond the window frames point to such an atmosphere. This kind of composition is frequently adopted in the film. Windows and doors are left open, and there is always a shiny bright world across such 'frames'. The alley, which has a specific meaning for the neighborhood, lies between the rows of houses, and also seems to function as a 'frame' dividing the reality and the world beyond (and the alley is shown as darker in the front, and gets lighter as it goes further in the scene). Chang Tso-Chi is perhaps telling us that there is always a brighter side of the world, full of beautiful light, which everyone can share, no matter if you have lived a hopeless life like a sewer rat, as long as you have the will to look beyond.
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[DIRECTOR'S PROFILE]
Born in Chiayi, Taiwan in 1961. After graduating from the Film and Drama Department of the Chinese Culture University and before going on to TV dramas and live theater, he worked for several different directors, including the role of assistant director to Hou Hsiao-hsien on "A City of Sadness". His first feature film was "Anye Qiangsheng (Gunshots in the Dark)" in 1993. Even though the producer Jacob Cheung tampered with the film, the altered version was screened at film festivals in Hong Kong and Guangdong. He was awarded Best Director at the International Thessaloniki Film Festival and the Jury's Special Prize at the Pusan Film Festival for his second feature film, "Ah Chung"(1996). This film was also screened at the New Directors & New Films Festival at the MOMA in New York. His third feature, "Darkness and Light" (1999), was the first to be made by his own independent production company and was awarded the Grand Prix as well as three other prizes at the 12th Tokyo International Film Festival. "Darkness and Light" was also awarded Best Film and NETPAC/FIPRESCI Awards at the 13th Singapore International Film Festival, Best Editing, Best Original Writing, Most Popular Film and the Grand Jury Award at the 36th Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival in 1999, and was selected for the "Directors' Fortnight" at the Cannes Film Festival.
[DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT]
In a way, it's like a condensed shade of juvenescence
In a way, it's like deadly youthful days, full of romance
I believe light always remains the same
Likewise, I feel everything will remain the same
No reason is needed
A little strength to hold on to one's ground,
and a little illusion, that's what is needed
At a specific moment
All that is needed is just to exist
Green trees may make up deep exuberant forests
A combination of a fast flow of water and a wall that prevents it may make
up a vigorous spray of water
I wonder if countless palsy makes up human sense
I wonder if a mesh of intermittent recollections makes up passage of time
I face a momentary stop, passing by one after the other
I never realized how much my being meant before
I never realized my being was not allowed to change
Maybe, maybe...
Maybe everything about me is a birth of a new recollection
Maybe the whole existence is about to start now
Maybe it's an ending of an ending
What occurs to my mind is...a piece of beautiful times....and it's mine
STAFF
Director / Screenplay : Chang Tso-Chi
Executive Producer : Lu Shih-Yuan, Makoto Ueda (NHK ENTERPRISES 21, INC)
Director of Photography : Chang Yi-Ming
Art Director : Chen Hawi-En
Music and Sound : Hugo Pandaputra
Editor : Liao Ching-Sung
Production Manager : Ma Tai-Sheng
CAST
Xiao Uei : Fan Ji-Uei
Ah Chien : Kao Meng-Chien
Xiao Uei's Sister : Wu Yu-Chi
Ah Che : Tseng Yi-Che
Ah Chien's Uncle : Tsai Ming-Shiou
Ah Chien's Brother : He Huang-Ji
Xiao Uei's Grandmother : Yu Uan-Mei
Japanese Subtitles : Fumiko Osaka
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