This is where all of the aspects of Hou's style coalesce to form the ultimate source of its power --- so it might be appropriate to read this section last. Because the camera sits on various points of an axis, the same view is repeated over and over through the film. The more important the space, the more often its image is repeated. This is responsible for much of the emotional effectiveness of Hou's style because the shots come to resonate, both subtly and powerfully, against each other. As a view is repeated, a residue of action and emotion builds.
For example, consider the view of the hospital entrance way. Here we see a band marching down the outside steps during the celebration of Japan's defeat. Long separated friends reunite beneath its graceful, arched entrance. When the political situation turns sour and the violence of the 2/28 incident begins, wounded Chinese are carried through the portal...followed by an angry mob of Taiwanese. Later, we hear the radio broadcast of the nationalist leader echo through the halls, assuring the country --- with bold hypocrisy --- that nothing is wrong. Not long after that, Hinomi crosses the hospital's threshold to give birth to her son, and the emotions and memories associated with this life, pain and death coalesce.
The view of the shrine is one of the most highly charged in the film because of this narrative and visual repetition. The first time we see it, a celebration for the opening of the new family business is underway. After that, it is repeated in 19 long takes, serving as the site of weddings, scoldings, feasts, reunions, and the mending of wounds. The table in the foreground serves as the site of countless meals, and tallies the toll the political sea changes take on the family. Fewer and fewer sons are alive to share meals, and in the devastating penultimate shot of the film, only the patriarch and his shell-shocked son survive to eat together (C 37:15- 39:00). As for the rest of the family, their absence is their presence.
This emotional residue is capable of charging "empty" shots as well: the last view of the film is simply the staid Chinese vase sitting below the diamonds of stained glass (C 39:00-39:40). Nothing happens. But the events that echo throughout that space infuse it with a quiet sadness. The broad contrasts that these repetitions involve would be clumsy and ineffective had they been traditionally juxtaposed by means of montage. Instead, by virtue of their common placement in nearly identical mise-en- scene, they resonate across the vast temporal reaches of the narrative.