The first shot of the film shows the Japanese emperor's surrender edict on the radio, while a middle-aged man burns incense because his wife is about to give birth. What made him complain was that the electricity had been out for too long. Such a simple set of shots expresses the film's position very clearly from the very beginning. The common people only care about their own lives, and it doesn't matter who rules as long as it doesn't affect their lives.
For intellectuals, Taiwan's return to Chinese rule is still something to look forward to. At least that's how they started drinking and chatting. Although their ideas were quickly shattered, after the handover, the foreigners turned the court into their court, selling rice candy to Shanghai, regardless of the life or death of the Taiwanese. The conflict between the province and the other provinces is pointed out.
Let me mention that Hou Hsiao-hsien's personal style is strongly reflected in this film. Many empty shots and positioning shots provide a fairly objective perspective for this film describing the impact of the 228 Incident on the people of Taiwan. This perspective makes the film feel like a documentary a lot of the time.
And like other Hou Hsiao-hsien films, this one still maintains his unique narrative style. He cuts out all the conflict in the film. If this film was made for a more commercial director, it would definitely be the law enforcement violence of the 228 investigation and anti-smuggling cigarettes, and then the bloody suppression of the people by the army would be indispensable. And how those intellectuals were brutally murdered. How did the people fight under the corpses that were shot dead in the street?
But Hou Hsiao-hsien is Hou Hsiao-hsien, and he has no interest in filming things that are too dramatic. Therefore, in this film, the woman who died of smuggling cigarettes was already a corpse as soon as she appeared on the scene, and many people who died in Taipei were only told through the mouth of the protagonist. With the persecution of the protagonists in the second half of the story, the effect of this blank space came out. How terrifying is 228, and it is this kind of inhuman persecution that has been repeated tens of thousands of times over a long period of time.
And through this narrative method, what Hou Hsiao-hsien left behind were fragments of his life. A very brilliant slice of life, full of tons of unique and fascinating details. Whether it's a group of people drinking, chatting and singing, or the way Taiwanese speak with a mixture of Hokkien and Japanese. Hou Hsiao-hsien can be said to have restored the most real white terror period in film history, how ordinary people lived. And this restoration method can be said to be quite convincing.
In such a movie full of life, what happened to them is even more shocking. Hou Hsiao-hsien did not need to photograph how Wenqing was arrested and executed. He just took Wenqing's wife and children to take a complete family portrait, and in the next scene, he told you through other characters that Wenqing was arrested and never came back. This is enough, and people can clearly realize what kind of atmosphere Taiwan was living in during the White Terror.
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