牯嶺街少年殺人事件 A Brighter Summer Day

***** SPOILER ALERT ******

There are movies I just go and see--because they kind of fit my schedule.  And there are movies I say I want to see but never did--because they kind of not fit my schedule. And then there is A Brighter Summer Day, an unapologetically, interminably, and spectacularly boring fine piece of film making. It takes certain courage, commitment, patience and plenty of luck and not to mention a whopping or meager $17 to see A Brighter Summer Day on the big screen.  The length of the movie can be and is a turnoff.  Who has that much of time to spare anyway except maybe mindlessly surfing the web and online gaming?  And even if you are committed to spend 237 minutes, not 2 hours and 37 minutes like Google would have you believed, of your life to see it, there hasn't really been a good copy available for the longest time.  It's an unicorn of a movie, an alluring film that has grown even more elusive for the past twenty years since its 1991 debut, anywhere but here in America.  Everything changed when Martin Scorsese and company restored the film and had it released here in Lincoln Center for a very limited theatrical one week engagement: 2PM and 7PM from November 25.  I guess if you missed it this time you missed it for good.  Or you may have to wait another twenty years to see it on big screen again.  Hey, you never know, but you can always count on YouTube, Google Video or other dark alleys and corners of the Internet for some version of it. The Chinese title <<牯嶺街少年殺人事件>> reads like a news headline, the name of an article in a news magazine or even the name of a police report; it means "Bullock Ridge Street Teenager Murder Incident"--thanks Google Translate!  Indeed, the film is loosely based on or rather inspired by the first teenage murder happened in Taiwan in the 60s after the National government fled there in 1949.  Director Yang and the juvenile murderer went to the same school.  The murder was a sensation and left an indelible mark on the director's psyche.  The film is an artistic reconstruction of the events leading up to the climatic killing which is as tragic as it is inevitable.  Chang Chen, in his cinematic debut, plays the eponymous character, though most of the times he is affectionately referred to as Xiao S'ir  小四 (little fourth, as in his birth order); who is like most other teenagers from the Chinese diaspora, hangs out with gangs, gets into fights, skips classes, enjoys ambiguous romance--in his case with Ming (Lisa Yang) or affectionately Xiao Ming--you add "Xiao" to make everything endearing, a passive aggressive inadvertent femme fatale, and given the opportunities or being pushed over the edge, he is capable to kill and did indeed kill.  The Changs are originally from Shanghai, which explains everything, doesn't it?  The handsome father (Zhang Guozhu, is the father of the two sons on and off screen) resembles someone from the old Shanghai intelligentsia who has enough pride and stubbornness that can give him more than a lifetime of constipation, and prevents him from being happy, and makes him feel forever out of place no matter how long he has lived in Taiwan and away from Shanghai.  Though to be fair, his unhappiness and feeling of alienation are not totally unfounded--he was taken away one night and interrogated by the secret police for days.  The fact that Xiao S'ir fails to get into a day middle school only gives him more the reason to feel miserable.  The father tried in vain to save Xiao S'ir from the evening middle school first by trying to talk the school bureaucrat to review his son's exam papers, which the bureaucrat would have none of it; then by going through some back door through his fellow Shanghainese old friend in high or higher place.  And as fate would have it or in real life, things only get worse without getting any better.  The English title "A Brighter Summer Day" is more of a yearning than a declarative statement.  The irony is, in addition to being a mis-transcription of one of the lines of Elvis's singing of Are You Lonesome Tonight, most scenes are shot almost pitch black with minimum lighting--there is nothing bright or summery to the movie. There is little let alone fancy camera movements (there is however one day scene where Xiao S'ir and Xiao Ming are shown merely and briefly as shadows on a white door talking, alluding to their fragile transient youthful existence or even demise) nor are there any special sound effects.  The very first thing I notice, after years of movie consumption, the film feels still and disturbingly quiet, there is no sound effect to remind me it's time to feel sad, empathetic or exciting.  Besides the constant gloom, the film is peppered with the director's own brand of humors.  I don't know how on earth one of the film's villains or actually a protagonist is called Honey, in actual English no less, and it's not even a she or meant to be a joke.  And then we have Little Cat (I guess so called for his love of Elvis who is nicknamed as Cat King in the Chinese speaking societies), Little Tiger, Triangular Pantie (the song used to taunt him is such a riot), and Crazy so on and so forth.  Or why the parents, in distress, curse and talk dirty in Cantonese.  Like any good comedy, though this one is obviously not, it's actually a tragedy in disguise.  In the final tragic scenes, Xiao S'ir was seen carrying and clumsily tucking a Japanese little sword into his waist band and it fell right through his pants.  The scene is at once innocent, sad, funny and ominous.  It just doesn't auger well what's going to happen.  In the movie's typical wide shot, the audience watches helplessly in horror as the tragedy unfolds while the passers-by or in a sense the whole world blissfully ignores what is going on, purposely or not .  As if to reaffirm what Xiao Ming says moments ago, "The world does not change because of you."  Lisa Yang never again appears in any movie after Chang Chen killed her character on screen.  I don't blame her.  It would be impossible for her to star in another movie that is as good and as long as A Brighter Summer Day.  Ask Chang Chen.  If you refuse to be entertained and long for something dark and gloomy, A Brighter Summer Day is your ticket to this spectacularly boring cinematic experience.