The Terrorizers

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.

There's an interesting visual grammar at work in The Terrorizers, consisting of its approach to framing, movement, and pacing. The film is one of the better demonstrations of how images can serve as the basis of a conceptually rich experience. People and objects, because of how they're framed, because of the moment at which we encounter them and because of the light in which they're cast, evoke an atmosphere. In The Terrorizers, even a normally prosaic, and ignored, thing like, say, a staircase or foyer, is imbued with aching suggestiveness.

The Terrorizers is not on par with Yang's two most famous films - but it's pretty damn close. Melancholic throughout, all of the loosely connected characters are stricken by Antonioni-like ennui in a modernized, concrete Taipei, reflecting on lives that are heading in unwelcome directions. The ending(s) feel abrupt given the careful build-up, but the style and beauty of Yang's later gems are also displayed here.

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.

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.