DISTANT Analysis

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ANALYSIS

A double-movement between near and far.

The closer the critic approaches, the more distanced the object seems to become.

Can analysis suggest how the bits and pieces of its violent work move in concert? Perhaps we need to move away to see closer.

This distant analysis we gather the scattered, hypertextual musings left as digital traces on this computer. We turn to a single sequence from City of Sadness and chart the issues we've raised in the "closer" analysis of other sections.

We see the family through the death of the Oldest Son, his funeral, the marriage of Wen-ching (Youngest Son) and Hinomi, the birth of their son, and finally the death of Hinomi's brother.

This staggering narrative movement (in only 15 minutes of screen time) provides opportunities to discuss all the elements central of City of Sadness, from the obvious use of long take to the subtle difference of his representation of violence, the writing of history, and the narration of the nation.

This sequence consists of only 17 shots, the unit by which we have segmented the analysis. We recommend reading this after browsing other sections of the close analysis, as we take this opportunity to write with a broader stroke. (C 17:43-31:49).

1 --- A [Shanghaiese] smuggler and his men walk down the hallway of a bar, and a knife fight involving the Oldest Brother bursts into the background. The smuggler shoots Oldest Brother, who drops to the floor and dies with a shudder. (C 17:43-18:20 --- :38 seconds total)

Any segmentation is ultimately arbitrary, and important connections naturally bleed from the preceding and subsequent scenes. This is the last shot of a long sequence filled with unpredictable cuts. It begins with a card game with the Oldest Brother, moves to a bathroom where the brother-in-law of the Oldest Brother trades verbal jabs with one of the Shanghaiese smugglers. This escalates into a deadly fight when the latter jumps from off-screen with a knife. The struggle surges between on and off-screen space in subsequent shots, from the bathroom to the hallway to the Oldest Brother's card game. At the beginning of this segment's shot, the rival boss leads his wounded soldier down this familiar hallway, when once again the sounds of struggle fade in from unseen places. Oldest Brother jumps into the hallway and on-screen space, followed by two knife-wielding gangsters. Blades flash and bodies jerk to a violent dance, barely contained by the static frame of the screen until yet another unexpected element --- a gunshot --- both escalates and stops the violence.

2 --- A solitary bird floats above dark, misty mountains. (C 18:20-18:43 --- :22 seconds)

The hot yellow tones of the hallway give way to a chilling mist that obscures all but a trace of distant mountain ridges. It's an utterly empty transitional space filled to the brim with diffuse tension. A solitary crow cuts lazy arcs through the clouds, confirming death. Funeral music fades in over the sound of wind.

3 --- The family huddles under umbrellas during Oldest Brother's funeral. A man walks to one side and picks up one of the ceremony's props... (C 18:43-19:14 --- :32 seconds)

4 --- ...and begins burning it in a pyre next to the onlookers. The funeral music begins to fade. (C 19:14-20:01 --- :49 seconds)

The family stands, motionless, enveloped by fog, holding an image of Oldest Brother. This is as close to the family as Hou will bring us; it's as close as we need to be, for it is not an individual tragedy. It's the sadness of a family, a community, a nation. This is why the second shot --- taken from the same angle only further removed --- is far from redundant. Its recession is also an expansion; the further the camera moves the more mourners it includes.

 

5 --- On an expansive mountain overlooking the ocean, a wedding procession appears. (C 20:01-20:48 --- :37 seconds)

As if completing the camera's retreat, we see an expansive landscape on a fair, sunny day. Initially a space in which to pause and reflect on the passing of Oldest Brother, it radically shifts to a new beginning. Gradually, the bright sounds of wedding music fade in and the tiny figures of a procession crawl across a distant hill. [Again the cycle of death-birth set in the film's opening sequence begins to re-play in the march of this sequence.]

6 --- The family enters its home, filling a room dominated by the family shrine. Wen-ching and Hinomi begin their wedding by praying to their ancestors. (C 20:48-21:11 --- :31 seconds)

Latticed windows of a sliding door separate the camera from the shrine room, fracturing the frame into a myriad of quadrilaterals. In the midst of this bewildering space, surrounded by relatives both living and dead, Hinomi and Wen-ching take their vows.

 

7 --- Facing the camera, the couple bow before the family shrine. (C 21:11-21:56 --- :28 seconds)

The couple receives incense, and bow to show their respect to family members that have come before them. The focus of attention, they are also perfectly centered in the frame --- though each bow leaves the family in the background watching on.

8 --- The couple continue their bows with the patriarch and his grand daughter looking on. (C 21:56-22:23 --- :27 seconds)

A reverse shot complementing the previous reverse shot, this ignores the "common sense" of camera placement in favor of the Logic of Hou and the Law of the Family. Hinomi and Wen-ching are no longer centered, but have been moved to the periphery, the left edge of the frame. This brings Old Man Lin to our attention; as Hinomi continues her bows, he observes approvingly. Decentering the couple brings to the fore the dynamic of the bride's entry into the Lin family sphere, a territory intimately linked to the cinematic space of the house. This shot aligns its view with the axis initiated early in the film and invoked again by the first shot of the wedding scene. . .

9 --- The couple bow to each other, and the ceremony ends with applause. (C 22:23-23:01 --- :38 seconds)

. . . and repeated once again in the last shot of the wedding. The ceremony ends with a view of the family, competing with the graphic strength of the windows and doors of the room.

10 --- Outside, people mill around a market street below a cacophony of roofs slanted this way and that. Soon Hinomi wanders out of the background and slowly makes her way to the foreground to buy vegetables. It soon becomes evident that she is with child. (C 23:01- 24:09 --- 1:08 seconds)

Beginning as a transition emphasizing the graphic qualities of the jumbled buildings and the milling market they contain, this shot also marks a typically undecidable ellipsis. The amount of time elapsed since the wedding is hidden until the figure of Hinomi detaches from the crowd. She approaches the camera, drawing our attention away from the play of the rooftops and towards the unmistakable dress and gait of impending motherhood.

11 --- At his light table, Wen-ching touches up his wedding photo. (C 24:09-24:28 --- :37 seconds)

Gently touching brush to negative, Wen-ching perfects the representation of his own wedding. In a quiet economy of restraint, Hou marks and divides the social space of the couple. Hinomi collects food, bears children; Wen-ching works. Within only two shots, we are graphically presented the gender divisions of the nuclear family.

 

12 --- Still very pregnant, Hinomi carefully sits down at the dinner table and places food in her mute husband's bowl. She takes away the book he reads, and they eat together, silently. (C 24:28-25:59 --- 1:45 seconds)

Scenes of eating acquire ritual significance in the films of Hou Hsiao-hsien. However, the offering at this meal departs from the standard fare. The Lin family table seats men only, but here in the nuclear family individual interaction is a value. Wen-ching's intense concentration on his reading displaces the usual gendered hierarchy (table reserved for patriarchs please). Categories shift, though no verbal communication is possible. Silent communion is better than the distractions of the page.

13 --- Wen-ching leads Hinomi through the entrance of the hospital, while thunder rumbles in the background. (C 25:59-26:36 --- :39 seconds)

Hinomi and Wen-ching walk into another geometric space. Like the shots of the rooftops and the wall of windows, this view of the hospital entrance also emphasizes the bold graphic shapes marking the composition. The entrance is a graceful, white archway that gleams in the sunlight. In the background outside, a set of stairs stand at an angle, playing off the semicircle of the entranceway. This has previously framed the victims of massacre; now it's the gateway for a new life in the world. . . . Thunder rolls in the distance.

14 --- Rain falls quietly over the distant bay. (C 26:36- 27:01 --- :25 seconds)

The interior, cyclical, eternal property of woman's time. Writing we explore within our own. Writing. Hinomi voices her thoughts on the damp weather. In a twisting knot of intertwining sound and image, Hinomi's diary, the sound of her voice, the rolling thunder and drizzling rain condense, punctuating the moment with her subjectivity. Sound/writing/image work in concert to reassure and affirm her private and self-sustaining world.

15 --- Hinomi writes in her diary; her year-old baby skirts around the table, playing. (C 27:01-29:15 --- 2:29 seconds)

The diary wanders. One place to another place. Nature, brother, baby, family, failing economy, flagging supplies --- all disseminate through her voice. Fragmentary, temporal descriptions of her private life and social, public situation supplement and document the intrusion of history into the personal. Hinomi's Diary writes the history of the Nation. The quiet interiority of the feminine voice. The temporal privacy of female writing. Both register a supplementary history through writing. Insignificant in the face of massive social and political change? Perhaps. But certainly the diary dwells in history understood as representation inscribed by countless discursive forces.

16 --- At night, a stranger knocks on the door, and hands a letter to Wen-ching. (C 29:15-29:52 --- :45 seconds)

A message arrives in the dark; by now it is no secret that writing often brings frightening tidings.

17 --- Hinomi feeds their baby on their futon. Wen-ching sits down, gives her the note, and they cry in each other's arms. (C 29:52- 31:49 --- 2:24 seconds)

The written word often communicates the most central events in this city of sadness; though we are not privy to the contents of this letter, we know from their silent devastation that it announces the death of Hinomi's brother. Oblivious to their grief, the baby plays around them as the sound of struggle fades in from unknown spaces. Although this shot approaches three minutes in length, most shots in this sequence are near the film's average of 42 beats. They mark a patient, regular rhythm, and all but three are perfectly still. These images contain scant narrative action . . . the spaces between them are an entirely different matter. Not only has time passed in enormous temporal gaps, but the narrative has moved in corresponding leaps: from death to funeral to wedding to pregnancy to birth to childhood and tragically back to death. Long takes play off their ellipses, creating a dialectic between narrative stasis and drastic movement. A temporal contrast between real and elided time, both brought under an overarching cyclical structure connected to the revolution of life and death. The final cut marking the end of this sequence initiates a flashback to the brother's capture by KMT troops, structurally mimicking the turning-back motion of the larger life cycle.

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