We use cookies to personalize your experience and analyze traffic. You can opt out at any time.
A-yuan and A-yun are both from the small mining town of Jio-fen. They move to Taipei, where A-yuan is an apprentice by day and goes to night school, and A-yun works as a helper at a tailors. Everyone thinks they are meant for each other, and so do they. They fail to see time and fate are beyond their control.
No showtimes for Dust in the Wind in Los Angeles today.
Dust in the Wind showtimes, refreshed every morning
Pick your cinema, get a nudge before it leaves screens.
"Potatoes can only absorb the nutriment after the vines have been cut. Then they'll grow well."And hindsight is 20/20, and you never know what you've got till it's gone, etc. 109 minutes means 6540 seconds means roughly 159,960 frames/attempts here to hold a moment of time.
The march of time spares no one. Its passage is inevitable. As fate would have it, some instances of this unstoppable nature of time turn into a sudden typhoon. Within a few swift yet unexpected moments, it changes people. The blooming flower of love withers into dust in the ferocious wind of time. What once was, now ceases to be.Hou Hsiao-hsien's meditative long takes are just about as immersive as shots can get. He patiently makes every shot and scene count. The static shots build up to emotions which quietly but steadily creep up on us. Every emotion settles in on us, right before melancholy takes over upon the realisation that the only certainty in life is uncertainty.Dust in the Wind begins in darkness as a train goes through a tunnel. The dot of light steadily enlarges until it's out of the tunnel. And then it heads back into another tunnel, before finding the light yet again. Hou Hsiao-hsien, in this tide of light and darkness, encapsulates what this film - and by extension, life - is all about. The ebbs and flows will go on. The occasional typhoon might show up unexpectedly. Amidst the fleeting nature of seemingly everything, life goes on.
while 'dust in the wind' does bridge hou’s early semi-autobiographical narratives and his more formally pronounced 90s films, it’s not a transitional work, in the sense that that label implies a journeyman quality. hou’s nuanced and varied approach to lighting should alone dispel that notion. hou’s staging often transforms relatively small areas into vast spaces. within these spaces the protagonists are often crowded by people, architecture, and ordinary objects. this strategy, employed both laterally and through depth of field, underscores the couple’s insignificance and malaise. (i'd really like to read an in-depth treatment of this film because i feel incapable of properly writing about hou hsiao-hsien.)
The film follows two young lovers who migrate from a remote mining town to Taipei, where they face the trials of growing up and the quiet drift of fate.
It was directed by the prominent Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien in 1986, a key figure in the Taiwanese New Wave movement.
Yes, it is considered a foundational work of the Taiwanese New Wave, which shifted the focus of local cinema toward realistic, often melancholic depictions of Taiwanese life and history.
