Edward Yang’s A One and a Two (“Yi Yi”) – A Visual Arts Movie Review

Edward Yang’s A One and a Two (“Yi Yi”) – A Visual Arts Movie Review

Edward Yang’s Yi Yi (2000) is a poignant and deeply reflective film that captures the complexities of modern life, family dynamics, and personal identity. As one of the most revered works by the late Taiwanese filmmaker, Yi Yi presents a multi-layered narrative that delves into the lives of a middle-class family in Taipei. The film intricately weaves together the lives of each family member, using visual arts techniques to tell a story about love, loss, and the search for meaning in an increasingly fragmented world. This review will explore how Yang’s use of visual elements, cinematography, and subtle performances come together to create an introspective and emotionally resonant film.

1. Cinematography: Framing Life’s Small Moments with Precision

One of the defining aspects of Yi Yi is its cinematography, masterfully crafted by the legendary Taiwanese cinematographer, Mark Lee Ping-bing. The film adopts a slow, deliberate pacing, with extended takes and carefully composed shots that reflect the inner worlds of its characters. Yang’s camera lingers on mundane yet significant moments, capturing the emotional weight of daily life. This emphasis on visual stillness allows the viewer to reflect on the nuances of human behavior, rather than rushing through plot points or dramatic actions.

A notable characteristic of the film's visual style is the way it frames characters in wide shots. The camera often places characters in large, open spaces, highlighting their isolation or internal struggles. These wide, unhurried frames create a feeling of distance, yet the stillness of these shots invites the audience to engage more deeply with the characters’ emotions and thoughts. The use of space in Yi Yi reflects Yang’s understanding of the human condition—how individuals are often both physically and emotionally distant from one another, yet connected by shared experiences.

For viewers interested in films that use cinematography to enhance emotional depth or movies that explore personal relationships through visual storytelling, Yi Yi serves as a brilliant example of how pacing, composition, and space can deepen the narrative’s emotional impact.

2. Symbolism in Visual Storytelling: Life, Loss, and Memory

Throughout Yi Yi, Yang employs visual metaphors and subtle symbols that resonate with the film’s central themes of life, loss, and the passage of time. The use of reflective surfaces—mirrors, glass, and windows—becomes an important motif in the film, symbolizing the characters' introspection, separateness, and the elusive nature of truth. These reflective surfaces create moments of visual contrast, suggesting that reality is often fragmented, just as the characters' understanding of themselves and the world around them is fragmented.

For instance, in one scene, the young son, Yang-Yang, observes the world around him through a series of reflections, underscoring the theme of perception versus reality. The film’s emphasis on windows, both literal and metaphorical, invites the viewer to see the characters’ lives as they navigate their own inner landscapes, observing the external world but often unable to truly connect with it or understand it.

For viewers who enjoy films that use visual metaphors to explore complex themes or movies that employ symbolism to reflect human introspection, Yi Yi is a striking example of how visual elements can create layers of meaning in a narrative.

3. Family Dynamics: Emotional and Visual Composition

At the heart of Yi Yi is the multi-generational family and the way each character grapples with personal struggles, from existential questions to the complexities of relationships. The film focuses on three generations of the same family, primarily following NJ (Nien-Jen Wu), a middle-aged man dealing with professional and personal challenges, his wife, Min-Min (Elaine Jin), his teenage daughter, Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee), and their young son, Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang). The family dynamics are presented with such authenticity and subtlety that the audience feels deeply connected to each character’s journey.

The way Yang frames family interactions is significant in visually expressing the emotional weight of the relationships. In the film’s early scenes, the characters are often shown seated around the dining table, subtly reinforcing the centrality of family life while also emphasizing the emotional distance between the characters. Later, as the story unfolds, the characters’ physical separations
Order Now