Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.
Each new film is its own particular adventure. There are some that I go into with a particular idea in mind, of course, and others that I walk into cold. Edward Yang’s Yi Yi (A One and a Two) is such a film that I watched with little or no expectations. I knew only that it came recommended and that it tipped the scales at close to three hours. Since watching the longest films is always one of my goals in a given month, it seemed time to knock this one off the list.
Now that I’ve watched it, I’m not really sure how to react to it. Yi Yi has moments of beauty, flashes of brilliance, hints of genius. And yet despite this, I feel strangely disconnected from it in a way I didn’t expect. I don’t dislike the characters or the film itself. For whatever reason, though, I never felt compelled by or as invested in the characters as I should have been. Yi Yi is a slice of life, but it’s nothing more than a slice of life. The drama here is real, but the dramas that unfold on the screen are small dramas, important to those who experience them, but ultimately life on a small scale. Perhaps it’s this that left me less than compelled. I’m not sure. Something did, though, because try as I might, I simply couldn’t become as emotionally invested in these characters as I should have been.
