Region：Taiwan； Color：Color； Language：Mandarin+Taiwan Dialect+Japanese
Runtime：159 minutes； Subject：Family/ History/ Taiwan； Film-Type：Feature Film
"This island is pitiful. First the Japanese, then the Chinese.
Everyone exploits us and no one cares." - Wen-heung
On the evening of February 27th, 1947 in Taipei, police ruthlessly beat a woman selling illegal cigarettes and the next day opened fire on a protest demonstration outside the Presidential Palace. Years of resentment against a government increasingly defined by nepotism, corruption, and suppression of human rights exploded in open conflict. As soon as the troops arrived, they began the systematic round up and execution of scholars, lawyers, doctors, students and local leaders of the protest movement. In total between 18,000 and 28,000 people were murdered by Chinese troops sent from the mainland by Chiang Kai-shek. Thousands of others were arrested and imprisoned and martial law was established in what became known as the "White Terror" campaign.
Hou Hsiao-hsien's magnificent 1989 film, A City of Sadness, brings to light the truth about the 1947 massacre known as the 2/28 incident. Winner of the Golden Lion Award at the 1989 Venice Film Festival, A City of Sadness treats one of the key issues of Taiwanese history, yet is far from being a political film. Its focus is not on the bloodshed but on the consequences for a particular family and how individual experience is impacted by the flow of time and history. In the film, Wen-heung (Chen Sown-yung), the oldest of four Lin brothers, tries to hold the family together with the support of Ah-lu (Li Ten-lu), the family patriarch. A brutish, feverishly emotional man, he has turned his Japanese bar into a family restaurant known as "Little Shanghai" but finds his business undermined by ruthless Shanghai gangsters. The second brother, Wen-sun disappeared in the Philippines and is talked about but never seen in the film.
Brother number three, Wen-leung (Jack Gao) suffered mental problems as a direct result of the war and is bedridden at a local hospital. Amazingly, he recovers enough to deal with Shanghai drug smugglers but is framed as a Japanese collaborator and, after being beaten in prison, loses his mental balance again. The fourth Lin brother, Wen-ching is deaf and runs a photography studio. Wen-ching is involved with young anti-government socialists such as his friend Hinoe (Wu Yi-fang) who is forced to flee to the mountains to join the guerillas. Wen-ching also wants to join the movement but is persuaded to stay home and care for Hinoe's sister, Hinome (Hsin Shu-fen), a nurse, who loves him.
One major theme of the film is communication. Five languages are used, four Chinese ones plus Japanese, although the force of this is somewhat diminished for a non-Chinese audience as the subtitles are obviously all in a single language. Another form of communication, writing, is used by the deaf-mute brother when conversing with anyone else, including the girl he eventually marries (his best friend’s sister, a nurse at the aforementioned hospital). When he has this form of written conversation, we see the messages in Chinese characters, along with the explanatory subtitles. Incidentally, the scenes when he and the girl (played by Xin Shufen) are clearly growing in mutual attraction while silently discussing, in writing, the activities of her brother are superbly realised, impeccably acted. Just watch the subtle changes of expression on their faces during these long-drawn-out “conversations”.
