#90 Yi Yi (Yang) at The Roxie
Edward Yang's slice-of-life family drama has been called meditative, bittersweet, and stunning by film critics. I found it... fine. At three-hours long, it wasn't terribly painful, but it was just fine. I couldn't connect with the sense of disappointment, heartbreak, joy, and love the film is known for. Maybe the long takes, austere cinematography, or slow pacing of New Taiwanese Cinema are all too subtle for me. But Yi Yi (2000) felt overly restrained.
In my effort to understand why this film is considered one of the best ever made, I learned that yi yi means “one by one” in Mandarin. The film doesn’t follow any conventional narrative patterns; things simply unfold as they do in real life, one after another, one by one.
So I suppose it's poetic. But it might be lost on me.