So one of the big differences between watching movies off the S&S list in 2016 and now has been that everything is pretty easily available — back then, I had to resort to torrents to find half the movies at all, but now there are enough streaming channels and indie publishers of physical media that I’ve been able to find everything one way or another.

Until now, because this (the penultimate movie at this giant tie for #157) wasn’t available literally anywhere… except a (definitely unauthorized) video on YouTube, a terrible quality upload that I think was a hyper-compressed rip of an old-school DVD. Which is a real pity, because I think this movie would be really attractive if I could see it better, but alas. (There was apparently a 4K restoration done in 2023, which was released in theaters in Taiwan, but no streaming/physical release yet.)

Anyway, this is a Taiwanese movie from Hou Hsiao-hsien, and it’s about the post-WW2 Taiwanese experience. It starts with Emperor Hirohito on the radio announcing Japan’s unconditional surrender, and then follows a particular family over the following years, after the Japanese return their colonial possession to China. Given the title of this movie, and that the later part of the period it shows is known as “the White Terror,” you might guess that it’s not the world’s happiest movie; you’d be right.

Which isn’t to say that it’s purely miserable. The real strength of the movie is that it shows this relatively normal family living through — or trying to live through — history. Of the four sons in the family, one died in the war, one owns a bar, one was a soldier in the war and has come back traumatized, and the last is a photographer. Throughout this time, they’re doing the kinds of things that people do — having babies, getting married, having dinners with friends — but the political situation obtrudes, often unpleasantly.

That tension between the rhythms of an everyday life and the backdrop of political persecutions and killings is more brutally effective than any big sweeping drama would be. When a woman in the movie says that despite it all, she thinks she can be happy with her husband and child, I just waited for the blow to land. It’s not called A City of Happiness, lady.

Apparently this movie is particularly significant in Taiwan, because it was one of the first movies about the White Terror — it came out in 1989, and martial law only ended in 1987(!). But even from my perspective, as someone who had only the haziest outlines of Taiwanese history, this was an excellent movie. I can easily see why people would have put it on their lists.