That Day, on the Beach

Darren Carver-Balsiger4.5

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Addison5.0

“With all that education, you should know what happiness is.”Yang’s feelings towards marriage and relationships are so profound and complex that they still have lessons to teach almost thirty-five years later. Up there with Scenes From a Marriage in it’s study of relationships built on unstable contentment and silence, and the stark ways the downfalls are portrayed; platonic, professional, and romantic.I’d link you to the Wikipedia page about That Day, on the Beach, but it doesn’t exist.“Just keeping this small life going so long is something worth celebrating in itself.”

rischka4.0

edward yang's first feature already shows a masterful grasp of complex family dynamics, exploring many themes within a nest of flashbacks. often cited as the debut of taiwanese new wave cinema, it focuses primarily on its female characters, especially sylvia chang's jia-li. a reunion with a childhood friend sets up the unspooling narrative featuring multiple time shifts, taking us from the strict family home where jia-li flees an arranged marriage to be with her teenage boyfriend, to her life as a bored upper class housewife who fills her time with shopping and flower arranging. the gradual dissolution of their once happy union is one of the most realistic i've seen portrayed on film. yang manages the fractured structure like a pro, keeping confusion to a minimum. the climax of the story (that day, on the beach) may be seen as an homage to one of yang's favorite directors, antonioni, but the interwoven story lines exploring tensions of modern life and the sensitive and humane treatment of difficult relationships would become yang's trademark. "the bombs we plant in each other are ticking away."