The Time to Live and the Time to Die (Hou, 1985): Garden Cinema, 2pm
This is part of the Made in Taiwan season at the Garden Cinema. Details here.
Chicago Reader review:
A reflective autobiographical film (1985) about filmmaker Hou
Hsiao-hsien’s youth in the late 40s and early 50s. Largely filmed in the
same places in Taiwan where the events originally happened, this
unhurried family chronicle carries an emotional force and a historical
significance that may not be immediately apparent. Working in long takes
and wide-screen, deep focus compositions that frame the characters from
a discreet distance, Hou allows the locations to seep into our own
memories and experience, so that, as in Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs
and Tian’s The Blue Kite, we come to know them almost as intimately as
touchstones in our own lives. Yet paradoxically, the unseen Chinese
mainland carries as much weight in the film as the landscape of Taiwan:
Hou’s Christian family left in 1948, and the revolution that followed
made it impossible for them to return. Subtly interweaving everyday
details with processes and understandings that evolve over years, the
film conveys a density of familial detail that we usually encounter only
in certain novels, and a sense of the tragic within hailing distance of
Ozu. This was the first film by Hou I ever saw, and it provides an
excellent introduction to his work as a whole
Jonathan Rosenbaum
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