Die Spur des Schreckens

Edward Yang is one of the few filmmakers who can made the present-day seem like a dystopia. He is often compared to Antonioni: this is his 'Blow-up' - an ascetically formal, fragmented murder mystery stumbled on by a photographer. In his use of dream narrative and a character who writes a mystery novel, Yang goes beyond the Italian in narrative obscurity. 'The Terroriser' shares many themes with his more accessible masterpieces 'A Brighter Summer Day' and 'Yi-Yi' - the alienation of capitalist, urban life; the alienation of relationships and aimlessness of youth; the mind-numbing compromises and betrayals in the workplace - but in a framework that coldly precludes identification.

The opening film of this retrospective a few days ago, The Terrorizers was presented in a gorgeous restored digital transfer that is beautiful to gawk at every frame, and in essence what would have probably been seen during its first ever debut back in 1986. It's not cheap nor easy to have a film remastered and restored to get rid of pops, cackles and dirt, or to readjust its colour grading, as seen during the promotional clip on its restoration before the film proper, and it's really an excellent job done given the tremendous amount of effort behind the scene.

Edward Yang's third feature film, co-written with Hsiao Yeh, may have given the audience an ultimate red herring with an action oriented introduction complete with cops and robbers and a shootout, only for that to serve as just about the only real action sequence in this film that's steeped in what would be a relatively violent outcome by the time the end credits rolled. The Terrorizers tells a myriad of inter-weaving story lines involving a myriad of characters, such as Wang An's delinquent Eurasian girl who runs a call girl scam where she robs her clientele in hotel rooms and a photographer's obsession with her when he snaps her escape from the cops.

But the storyline that just begged for attention, is something similar like his first two films that dealt with the breakdown in relationships against the backdrop of modernity, and how modern life and its expectations chip at passion and romance, where couples rarely emerge unscathed from failure to communicate their true intentions. I suppose it is akin to the filmmaker's way of constant warning, given a trilogy now focused on this aspect, that to have emotions kept within oneself would only pave way for a massive blowout when the last straw is reached, and this offers no chance whatsoever for reconciliation, only destruction, and the humiliation that comes along with it.

We see it all coming from the first time the couple of Yue Fen (Cora Miao) and her husband Li Zhong (Lee Li Chun) got introduced, where the former's writer's block complaint becomes an avenue to be chided by her husband, who deemed her issue rather unimportant given that it is a work of fiction, and not life and death. Clearly this lack of sensitivity was the seed sowed, before a random cataclysmic event evolves this into her wanting to leave the matrimonial home for a place where she can get some escape and seek out inspiration, which turned out to be nothing more than seeking out an ex-lover to carry out an affair with.

While you may want to sympathize with the husband, wait. Edward Yang and Hsiao Yeh for some reasons crafted a number of characters here who are mostly lacking in morals. Li Zhong, eyeing a promotion which he thinks is a given with the death of his boss, goes to the extent of framing a fellow co-worker so that he can eliminate the competition for that move upwards, which makes him quite the bastard who gets his karmic just desserts through the infidelity of his wife, which ultimately humiliates the man who has to wear a green hat, and is without a defining career which he so highly prizes it as sort of a beacon in social stature.

One can imagine just who the real terrorizers are in the film - it's easy to point the fingers at criminals as depicted in the beginning of the film, or whoever is holding that gun to exact some form of revenge against pride, but clearly in this instance, it's really the female of the species who continue to torment emotionally especially when the silent treatment gets exacted, which I feel is possibly the cruelest form of torture to a loved one. The ending is much talked about, and in my opinion seemed to stem either as material from the fictional book that Yue Fen finally churned out, or an alternative reality which points to a consistently bleak outcome of that modern day grind in life.

This film is a masterpiece, a telling of the loneliness of the modern world with perfect resonance. It is swift, vital, and brilliant. Along with Taipei Story, Yang has shown in The Terrorizers the pressures of urban life, love, and the ceaselessness of time more artfully than can be expressed in words. Youth and its joys and pains in a modern world have perhaps never been exhibited more skillfully than Yang has done in these two films. I have only found the Taiwanese new wave directors a month ago, but I will highly recommend Edward Yang to anyone who has ever truly felt loneliness or love. Yang is a beautiful director, and this is a beautiful film.

This film is shot entirely in Taipei, Taiwan, which in every film I've seen where it is a "co-star" is an interesting city. This film shows Taipei as gritty, dirty, ugly, poor and indifferent. The film was released in 1986 and it follows the police and ordinary citizens in situations which mirror everyday life, including shootouts and chaos. The first scene is a police siren and soon you see a dead man lying on the street. Scenes here are interwoven amongst the characters, who at first seem like they don't inhabit the same world. This makes the film kind of fascinating, that you're a fly on the wall in these people's lives. The use of stark imagery, shadows and light is very effective. The film, despite its title, is not about terrorism or the violence of a particular person. There are lies told in this film which cause some of the problems faced by the main characters. If you do not like moody, introspective films, I don't recommend this. However, director Edward Yang (whom we lost in 2007) has a very impressive body of work (you have to see "Yi Yi") and this is an impressive film.

Edward Yang is not the romantic type. In fact, The Terrorizers shows us romance as a crime. To use your partner for your own gain and thus robbing them of themselves. A man consumed by his identity as a cog in the capitalist machine has no chance of finding himself after he's used, been used and consequently drenched without him even knowing it. He no longer exists.

This movie is so philosophically sound, and its beauty lies in its loyalty to its message. The theme of terrorizing romance overlaps in every single frame of the movie. A wife leaving her oblivious, ignorant husband is the same as a hooker robbing her customer.

I think what we learn from this movie is that for a relationship not to be a crime, a collective direction is needed. The young girl knows this. Don't steal things from each other, steal together, from others.