Potpourri of life

Yi Yi - A One and A Two (Taiwan, 2000)
Written, Directed: Edward Yang.

Perhaps deep inside, we are all voyeurs. We like to observe people, seeing what they do behind the privacy of their doors. In the new pigeon holes that city dwellers run their hectic lives on the outside, they seem to be boxed in exclusivity. Conversely, with their clear glass exterior seemingly guarding their private spaces, to an inquisitive eye, all their dealing are bare open. Perusing through the landscape, we realise that everyone carries their own stories. What we see, as an outsider, maybe half-truths, skewed perspective, jaundiced or judgemental. We do not know the real predicament or turmoil that he is going through, but surely to a thinking person, it could be educational as we pave our own paths in the journey of life.

This Made-in-Taiwan movie tells the story of an extended family who lives in an exclusive high-rise apartment in Taipei. A 40-something couple with their two school going children (a teenage girl and a pre-pubescent boy) all have their internal issues to handle. Central to all these people is the maternal grandmother who is bedridden comatose with a stroke. The father, a software engineer, has to ask the burning question if life would have been different if he had pursued the love of his life. The mother, with her ill mother in the house living her remaining days, goes through an existential crisis. The teenage daughter is caught in a love triangle, and the son is bullied in school. Amidst all these, there are the father's brother, his demanding gravid new bride and the foul-mouthed old flame; the constantly squabbling neighbours with the adulterous wife and many characters to make us realise that life is a potpourri of fragrances. After some time, our senses get too numbed with the scent that we forget that it exists. We see the garden but fail to smell the flowers.

Even if we had decided to plant a different set of flora, the ensuing outcome would surely be uniquely different but aromatic, nevertheless. What if it were left to go wild, would it be sweet smelling too?

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The endpoint, the same.

Yi Yi: A One and A Two (Taiwan; 2000)

Thought provoking movie that tells about the simplicity of life and how it is made complicated. Life from the time immemorial has been birth, marriage, merry making along the way and death. Somewhere in the turn of time, we have made it perplexing and had created problems for ourselves.

It tells the perspective of life from the eyes of three generations and three couples at the prime of their lives.

There is NJ, the main protagonist, an engineer who did engineering not by choice but by pressure. He is a high-flying executive but still something is not fulfilled in his life. By chance, he bumps into an old school flame at a wedding and later during his business trip to Japan. His ex, Sherry, is now in the US after two unhappy marriages and imagines how life would have been if she had instead settled down with NJ.

NJ’s wife, on the other hand, has a mid-life crisis. She goes on a spiritual retreat trying to understand the meaning of life and tries to find peace in Buddhism.

NJ’s teenage daughter has boyfriend issues that she tries to sort out herself. NJ’s son, an awkward preteen, has issues with girl bullies and problems with his teachers who think he is a rebel.

NJ’s neighbour, a single parent lady, has an affair with her daughter’s teacher. The daughter herself fall in love with a boy who two times with NJ’s daughter.

NJ’s friend is shown in the early part of the movie, marrying a fully pregnant demanding socialite. Amidst all that is NJ’s mother-in-law who is affiliated with stroke.

After going through the trial and tribulation of our own made lives, marked by expectations and disappointments, we eventually have to lick our self-inflicted wounds and just be contented with what life and the world have to offer to us. We scream, we demand, we acquire, only to realise that the endpoint, the destination, is all but the same.

N.B. Different generations speak different dialects in this film. Mandarin seems to be popular amongst the young and is the formal form of speech in offices. The informal speech has Hokkien words in it. A Penang kia like me can appreciate many of its words.