Boring scene/landscape/boring scene/landscape/not so boring scene/landscape/boring scene/landscape....

Hou's style is reminiscent of Yasujiro Ozu so for many people it will be a love or hate it affair. There is a similar style of layered static compositions and the events of a family as the centerpiece which requires you to pay attention to the subtle details. There's no grand sweeping plot but just a Taiwanese family's experiences during the birth of a nation. Hou's naturalistic approach is excellent and thankfully avoids the use of contrived emotional plot devices or dramatic resolutions.

As a social symbol, it's groundbreaking; effectively the birth of Taiwanese national cinema and the subject is fitting. Hou set the standard for 15 years of Chinese-language cinema with this multi-generational epic, a template still used today.

Hou's compositions are gorgeous throughout, but this movie regards its action with such distance that I found it hard to get drawn into the complex story it tells.

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Hou's movies seem like a whole lot of nothing to me. As is often the case with his stories, this one takes you a while to figure out who everyone is and what their relations are to each other. It's been likened to a Taiwanese Godfather, which I guess is reasonable. It does have a kind of epic sweep to it, and plotwise, it's actually pretty substantial for a Hou film. It has some nice moments, and is perfectly competent filmmaking. But once again it didn't resonate much with me.

#349

Unfortunately despite the film's marvellous beauty, and some of the wonderful details such as the photo motif or having the funeral segue into the wedding, and the deaf man's story which I liked very much, I found the film very difficult to engage with emotionally and even more difficult to keep up with the plot of (in particular I have no idea what happened during the mob/drug smuggling section). I very much need to see it again (ideally on the big screen).

The very subdued style is a bit tough at times, but the content is very good. This kind of personal view of history can sometimes make it hard to take it all in for those unaware of the background, but Hou does a good job of making the context understandable and the characters sympathetic enough to want to explore the film.

Hou at his finest? Would possibly be a 100 for me if the "Red Monkey"/Shanghai gangsters-segment weren't so confusing.

City of Sadness knows that it is supposed to be a "landmark epic" of Taiwanese historical cinema, but it slogs its way toward that end disinterestedly and dispassionately - even while depicting horrible events. It is not for being sparse and leisurely that this film is boring, but because for most of its long running time it is simply insubstantial.

It failed to really get me involved despite the fact the kind of stuff it tackled really appealed to me. It's solid film making, don't get me wrong, I just failed to get engaged. I wish I could give it a higher store.

A beautiful, heavy-hearted film. The consistently restful and fervidly considerate cinematography and moody music nourish the film's historical outline with a sincere humanism difficult to dismiss.

# 308