A Brighter Summer Day

girl. But this Taiwanese epic drama takes that to another level introducing themes of nationalism, migration, politics, identity, adolescent/youth and violence. To some extent for some it might be hard to believe how these gangs of teenagers existed and fought over their ideology and values, but this film was based on a true incident. How one girl sparked the most hatred between two gangs was Ming. And the climax which involved ming and Xiao Sir was just so shocking and saddening. Edward Yang showcases all this in beautiful contemporary style, a perfect art house cinema which is technically so perfect and the performances are to die for. The movie so brilliantly handles contradictory pulls from the daily life, teenage passions and young generation growing up in a totally different social environment where they fought for their own identity. The movie also depicts the struggle of the Chinese family migrating to taiwan, how the father is accused of being communist, mother's despair, elder kids dream all this sheds a different perspective on the film apart from teenage violence and gang war. Its a movie that can be so personal yet so distant in many ways. There is also a pretty interesting influence of western music on the film from the title to characters. We see Elvis Presley posters and english songs in the film. It all shows a new era of generation drifting away from the old nationalists, but still fate pulls them back into old feuds again and again. It is a division of culture, nationalism and age in taiwan which is brilliantly depicted in the movie.