A One and a Two (173 mins, 15) Directed by Edward Yang; starring Wu Nianzhen, Issey Ogata, Elaine Jin
British cinema appears to range quite widely over the social spectrum taking in the plight of refugees, the antics of lovable cockney gangsters, the consciences of IRA gunmen, the ingenious schemes of unemployed northerners, the artistic ambition of miners' sons, the romantic problems of well-heeled, unmarried thirtysomethings. What our movies rarely touch on, and never in any depth, are the anxieties and aspirations of the professional middle classes, who are invariably viewed as comic or parasitic, patronised the way the working classes once were.
For this reason, Edward Yang's expansive film about an affluent, seemingly contented middle-class family in Taiwan, A One and a Two , will provide a welcome shock of recognition for many British moviegoers. Born in Shanghai in 1947, Yang was brought to what was then Formosa in 1949 and, like the hero of his new film, studied engineering before spending a decade in graduate school and working as systems designer in the States. He began filmmaking 20 years ago in Taiwan and has made six features, all elaborate social mosaics of life in Taiwan such as Taipei Story and the four-hour A Brighter Summer Day, ambitious, taxing movies in which I found more to respect than to enjoy. His new film is his best, most accessible to date and it deserves to find as large an audience in Britain as did his compatriot Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon .
The film's original title is Yi Yi, which literally means 'one-one' or 'individually' in Chinese. But Yang chose for its Western release to call it A One and a Two , the phrase used by the leader of a jazz band to introduce a number. The implication presumably is that his film is an improvisation on established themes, shifting in direction and tone but with a definite structure. It begins with a wedding and ends with a funeral.
At the centre of A One and a Two is N.J. Jian (Wu Nianzhen), a prosperous, BMW-driving businessman in his mid-forties, living in a flat in Taipei with his wife, outgoing 13-year-old daughter, withdrawn eight-year-old son and elderly mother-in-law. They are intensely serious, hard-working people and when the grandmother suffers a stroke that leaves her in a coma, they are deeply affected. The daughter, Ting Ting, feels obscurely guilty (her grandmother may have collapsed putting out the garbage she herself should have disposed of).
Out of a misplaced respect, the little son, Yang Yang, cannot bring himself to address the comatose old woman. N.J.'s wife, Ming Ming, falls into a depression that leads to her going into a Buddhist retreat, though the family no longer have any formal religious practice. In fact, a spiritual void in their lives is one of their troubles.
Meanwhile, N.J. faces a severe crisis in the electronics business where he is a partner. With serious cash-flow problems, should they form a business relationship with a leading Japanese manufacturer of computer games, managed by a Mr Ota? Or should they seek the support of a shifty Taiwanese company noted for its plagiarism and appropriately called Ato?
At the same time, N.J. meets for the first time in more than 20 years the love of his life, Sherry, whom he jilted as a student because she was attempting to deter him from following his vocation as a musician and turn him into the engineer he ironically became. She's living in the States, married to a US insurance man who is trying to enter the lucrative Chinese market.
Through his encounters with Sherry and Ota in Taiwan and Japan, N.J. considers his past, present and future. In particular, he forms a warm friendship with the Japanese businessman and a mutual trust is created between these two honest men who converse in English. Moreover, Ota reveals himself also to be a dedicated musician when he takes over the keyboards at a karaoke bar to give a spellbinding version of Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata'.
A One and a Two has a rich, complex, well-ordered plot and these business matters are subtly interwoven, as in an Altmanesque movie, with three other major strands.
First, there are the problems of N.J.'s children whose mother has fled and whose father is preoccupied. Then there's the single, professional mother and her handsome teenage daughter in the next-door flat, with whom Ting Ting becomes emotionally involved. Third, there's N.J.'s brother-in-law, a reckless, recently married businessman, permanently in debt, whose chief associate has absconded to China with company funds, leaving him to face the law.
You could say that N.J.'s family life is tinged with tragedy, that the people next door are the stuff of melodrama (under-age sex and murder turn up), while the brother-in-law's hectic life is pure farce. You might also see in N.J.'s family some sort of paradigm of Taiwan itself, this anxious, prosperous, insecure country of undefined status, its past confused, its future uncertain.
But without creating any false hopes, Yang's deep humanism gives the film a strongly affirmative feeling. This is expressed especially through the probity of the self-questioning N.J. and the fundamental decency and precocious moral insight of his son and daughter. This is a magnificently acted, deeply affecting movie. There will not be many better this year.
