Politics and History
The Time to Live and the Time to Die (1985) is an autobiographical
film by Hou Hsiao-Hsien, detailing his growing up in Southern Taiwan in the
1940's and 1950's. It tells the story of his whole family in those years as
well. Hou carefully includes political changes in the background, including
radio reports of the fighting over the Communist takeover on the mainland, that
prevented his family from going back to China. Hou also carefully shows
technological charges. The family moves to Taiwan in the first place, in part
because there is tap water already available there. Soon, men come to install
electricity. Later, we see the arrival of motorcycles, train travel, and the
ever growing numbers of motor cars.
Hou became involved in gangs as a teenager, as were many boys in his
neighborhood. He blames this in the film on the disintegration of Confucian
ideals, due to his family's isolation from the mainland. One could question this
analysis - after all, gangs are also a major problem in the USA, where the loss
of Confucian ideals have never affected most of the population. Still, there is
a powerful contrast between the lives of the parents in this film, and their
devotion to traditional duty, and the aimless lives of their sons.
Hou also shows the down sides of Confucian society. He is especially scathing
about the horrible sacrifices it imposed in women, and the second class status
they suffered under from birth to death. He also shows some of the terrible
poverty and disease traditional Chinese society had, a poverty that seems to
have been greatly ameliorated in Taiwan from the 1950's on. So he is not saying
that everything old is good, and everything new is bad. Still, the gang life the
kids fall into is a real waste. It is pretty shocking and repulsive.
Hou's work shows skepticism about Communism. The mainland fishers in Dust
in the Wind seem desperately hungry, perhaps a comment on food conditions on
the mainland. A letter in The Time to Live and the Time to Die depicts
the start of the worst period in Chinese Communist history, the Great Leap
Forward. It is still forbidden to show this terrible era in mainland Chinese
films; Zhang Yimou was banned from making films for two years for his courageous
if fairly oblique depiction of it in To Live (1994). Hou shows moral
integrity in mentioning it here, and having his characters mourn over it in the
film.
The heart of the film
Hou's film is similar to other works inspired by neo-realism, in that the
first half seems to be filled with joy, in recounting the pleasures of
traditional family life, and the second half is filled with sorrow, as suffering
and social disintegration tear everything apart. This is a good description of
the films in Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy, as well. I much prefer the first
half of both Ray and Hou's films to their second halves. Perhaps I am too
superficial and only want to see good things on the screen, but I have always
preferred descriptions of positive values and ideals. The first half of Hou's
work is a beautiful portrait of traditional Chinese life, with kids playing
together, family meals and rituals, photographs and little adventures. It is a
real eye opening experience for most Americans, who like me know little about
life in Taiwan.
None of the above description even begins to convey the tone of Hou's film.
The sociological changes are all shown in the background. The foreground of
Time shows scenes from daily life. These are staged with remarkable
beauty. Hou is a master of visual composition. He is especially good at showing
street scenes. These are often organized into horizontal bands. The upper level
shows a beautiful spreading tree, the next horizontal zone, the buildings, the
lowest part of the screen, the street. Hou also likes interiors. They tend to be
photographed so the walls are face on, parallel to the plane of the screen. This
is similar to the films of Ozu. And as in Ozu, this tends to produce rectilinear
compositions, often made up of the elaborate rectangular screen and grid work
that is prominent in many East Asian homes. However, the compositions that
ultimately result are very different in form and pattern from Ozu's. Hou's tend
to look "heavier" somehow, being made of a large, prominent blocks that tend to
have much visual weight and momentum in the composition. Hou's characters exist
in a much less secure world than Ozu's, but also one in which they seem
considerably freer.
Hou's scenes tend to show "typical" events of daily life. These events are
arranged chronologically in time, so that we see changes in both the family and
society. But they are not typically events in a plot, where one event leads to
the next event. Instead, each scene seems designed to reveal part of a
traditional life style. This makes Hou's film resemble John Ford's. Ford was
also deeply concerned with evoking traditional or isolated life styles on
screen, trying to convey the effect their daily rituals had on their
participants.
Hou's characters are much more concerned about their daily life than about
the big events going on in the background. In Dust in the Wind (1986),
some fishermen from mainland China are blown by a storm to Taiwan, where they
are picked up by an Army patrol. This could be the making of an international
incident. Instead, the scene centers on the platoon of soldiers, ordinary guys
all, giving the starving fisher family food to eat. This is very touching, and
suggests what is really important among human beings under all their political
problems.
Influence on later films
Hou's work has been acclaimed in France, where he was celebrated in a TV
documentary. A film made in Paris that might show the influence of The Time
to Live and the Time to Die (1985) is Tran Anh Hung's The Scent of Green
Papaya (1993). This Vietnamese work recreates traditional Vietnamese life
just as Hou's film shows that of Southern Taiwan. Both films are chronicles
depicting many years in the lives of a few families, both have a child who grows
to maturity as their central character, both show people who are somewhat
alienated from the environment and who have to adapt to a new way of life. Both
largely take place in the family home and its street environs. Both have a slow
moving, reflective tone, which lingers over details of traditional life with
considerable visual beauty.
The Family Chronicle seems to be a major genre in recent Chinese films. One
thinks of Zhang Yimou's To Live (1994) and Chen Kaige's Temptress
Moon (1997). Even Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1997) can be seen
as a long term look at the lives of a family.
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