As the Jian family lines up for a wedding portrait, three little girls tease eight-year old Yang-Yang by tapping on his head from behind. He turns around each time trying to uncover the pesky perpetrator. In this single shot, seconds into Edward Yang’s three-hour opus, Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 2000), the major themes in the movie are simply and elegantly put forward. Just like the photo being taken, the movie is a portrait of this family, father NJ (Nien-Jen Wu), mother Min-Min (Elaine Jin), daughter Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee), son Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang), along with Grandma and groom A-Di (Hsi-Sheng Chen), who are Min-Min’s mother and brother, respectively. Little Yang-Yang later wonders whether we can only see half of the truth since we can see in front of us but not behind. While his question is crudely expressed, the film explores it in all of its nuance – how we are limited by our perspective, what makes up this perspective, and how we deal with its limitations. Yang-Yang’s being teased from behind evokes this question in him and spurs an aesthetic answer in the form of a camera his father gives him, bringing us back to the idea of the portrait at the beginning. By thoughtfully imbuing such thematic concerns at every level – character, story, and mise en scène – Yang has crafted a work that achieves a level of profundity rarely seen in cinema.
 
As the Jian family lines up for a wedding portrait, three little girls tease eight-year old Yang-Yang by tapping on his head from behind. He turns around each time trying to uncover the pesky perpetrator. In this single shot, seconds into Edward Yang’s three-hour opus, Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 2000), the major themes in the movie are simply and elegantly put forward. Just like the photo being taken, the movie is a portrait of this family, father NJ (Nien-Jen Wu), mother Min-Min (Elaine Jin), daughter Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee), son Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang), along with Grandma and groom A-Di (Hsi-Sheng Chen), who are Min-Min’s mother and brother, respectively. Little Yang-Yang later wonders whether we can only see half of the truth since we can see in front of us but not behind. While his question is crudely expressed, the film explores it in all of its nuance – how we are limited by our perspective, what makes up this perspective, and how we deal with its limitations. Yang-Yang’s being teased from behind evokes this question in him and spurs an aesthetic answer in the form of a camera his father gives him, bringing us back to the idea of the portrait at the beginning. By thoughtfully imbuing such thematic concerns at every level – character, story, and mise en scène – Yang has crafted a work that achieves a level of profundity rarely seen in cinema.
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