By Michael Buening
Translator: Issac
Proofreader: Qin Tian
Source: Pop Matters (August 16, 2016)
One of the greatest film masterpieces, Yang Dechang's "The Juvenile Murder on Muling Street", ——— the road to release is very tortuous, and this process is as complex and epic as the film itself. Since the film's release in 1991, audiences have rarely had the opportunity to see it, except for sporadic screenings in the city's art theaters or museums.
The background text provided by the deluxe set from the standard collection is very popular. The Juvenile Murders on Mujie Street covers multiple levels: youth films, growth stories, gang/war films, social criticism, and sociological research in Taiwan after World War II.
Of course, even if the audience does not know the Japanese occupation of Taiwan in the early twentieth century, the legacy of the Chinese Confucian education system, or the oppressive atmosphere under Chiang Kai-shek's military rule, they can enjoy the film, but in this case, it is difficult to grasp the full complexity of the film, or the movement of the emotional basis of the characters. ("Our Time, Our Story, Our Story," which follows the rise of new Taiwanese cinema, is a valuable documentary feature film.) )
It's an ambitious film, hidden in a small-scale study of a teenage boy and his surroundings. It was inspired by a news story Yang dechang read as a teenager in which a boy murdered his girlfriend. Yang Dechang tried to recall from that moment, trying to think about what led to the murder, thus bringing the story to the heart of the story.
By quoting Tolstoy's War and Peace several times, we can see Yang Dechang's intention in narrating stories and studying history in an essayistic way. And it's no surprise when we learn that he ever thought about making this story into a TV series — it has a huge cast, a love of characters, and an obsession with time and place, all of which are similar to the "golden age" of many TV series today.
Set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the film opens with a teenage boy, Xiao Si (Zhang Zhen), who is forced to attend night school, which embarrasses his family, because going to night school is considered to have pronounced the death penalty, making it impossible for him to live a successful life, and this behavior essentially accelerates the arrival of everything that follows.
The story of Little Four entering night school has spawned several different threads. He and his best friend, Elvis Presley (played by the highly acting Wang Qizan), get embroiled in gang infighting in the classroom and eventually became embroiled in even greater gang violence in the community.
Elvis Presley pursues a singing career in a local squad, trying to work for Elvis Presley's Are You Lonely Tonight? The lyrics of " give a certain meaning. (The title is derived from a misunderstood lyric.) [Translator's note: The film is called A Brighter Summer Day])
Xiao Si becomes friends with the son of a well-known general, the spoiled and arrogant pony, and begins an awkward relationship with The girlfriend of the hidden gang leader Honey, Xiaoming (Yang Jingyi). Xiao Si's father (Zhang Guozhu) tries to get him back to day school by getting involved in a political conspiracy, and Xiao Si is both helpless and confused in the political plot.
Although Rebel without Cause influenced the film and its characterization, Yang Dechang went further than Nicholas Ray in portraying juvenile delinquency. Teenagers are clumsy, pretentious, and easily intimidated by the arrival of their parents or authority figures, but their naivety and impulsiveness can also bring real violence, and they need to prove their seriousness and maturity.
Yang Dechang reached an incredibly natural and harmonious relationship between the two young actors, resulting in the complex interaction of the characters in the group portrait scene. It was Mr. Zhang's first film (he's had a good star as an adult); in an interview on CD-ROM, he said that during the filming process, he rarely felt like he was making a movie, actually performing or integrating into his role.
However, Yang took advantage of his honest and sensitive face, an ability to project the semi-awakened state of an academically mediocre teenage boy who was more often echoing than insisting on himself.
All of these carefully choreographed narrative threads lead to the gradual collapse of Xiao Si and eventually killing Xiao Ming, although this is not obvious. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald's collapse, the moment of the crash "happened almost without your knowledge, but you suddenly realized it.".
When I watched the film for the second time, murder, or something equally tragic, seemed almost predestined and inevitable. The atmosphere of fear and oppression under military rule, through the formation and violence of youth gangs, is reflected and vented subconsciously.
Their "game" became more militaristic, with fights ranging from fists to sticks to guns reflecting the tense class ties between native Taiwanese, Japanese and provincials. Through their adult roles (mainly the father of the little four), we see how fragile and timid they are in the face of the impulses of the authoritarian regime. Sometimes, characters speak to people standing behind cameras, and this, combined with elaborate group portrait scenes, presents a subtle documentary dynamic.
Boys are both victims and perpetrators of violence, while girls struggle to define themselves in their circles. In the gang world, they are relegated to the role of mistresses or sluts, trading between boys, being ridiculed, and even abused. Their only chance to make a difference is to deliberately go from one boy to another, playing with their feelings, and they are attacked for it and blamed as a source of gang conflict.
Bob is clearly the biggest victim and the most obscure character. She's shy, and Ms. Yang is a new actress who doesn't speak Mandarin fluently, which gives the character a natural distance from other characters and her relationship with them.
The last outburst between Xiao Si and her is perhaps the most painful and ironic "real" performance between the two characters, when he slammed her as an actress who "cried and laughed, and everything seemed natural". But she didn't leave that impression on me in terms of acting or performance, and I don't know if it's the fault of the movie or the fanatical fantasies of a teenage boy.
Yang Dechang's view is certainly complicated. In "The Juvenile Murder on Muling Street," the director makes the most of the details of his films, and he and cinematographers Zhang Huigong and Li Longyu cleverly use light as a thematic technique. The light is constantly dimming and dimming, dimming in important gang fights to show the contrast between night school and daytime.
At the beginning of the movie, Little Four steals a flashlight, which becomes a tool often used by the boys. He complained that night school had blurred his vision, and that night school as a whole became a metaphor for a society trapped in the dark.
Film is created by shining light on film, which makes the film itself, and the act of making it, a manifestation of illuminating the world, into a "brighter summer day", which the characters strive for.
This time, the set of brochures includes a 1991 essay by Yang Dechang, in which he said that the film was "dedicated to my father and his generation, who suffered so much so much for our generation to suffer less." Art, he said, can help "somehow reconstruct the truth and restore our faith in human nature."
With an epic tone, the film portrays Taiwan in the middle of the last century with extraordinary delicacy and vividness, and is a great exploration of the elusive truth of the film.