Best Time - A Documentary on's Films

Author: Zhu Tianwen
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-11-01
Features: Aosheng: This is a rare documentary in film history, possessing a special familiarity long missed by Chinese readers, where literature and history are intertwined. [About the Book] This collection comprehensively gathers various articles written by the author over more than two decades for the film industry. It is also an important documentary in film history, providing a multi-faceted and complete record of Hou Xiaoxian's works. On one hand, the book includes textual materials from all of the films of the renowned Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Xiaoxian, serving as a direct written record of his cinematic achievements. On the other hand, Zhu Tianwen documents the nuances of Hou's films through different forms such as novels, screenplays, reviews, interviews, and essays, which also function as an alternative collection of writings by the author Zhu Tianwen. Zhu Tianwen's writing is elegant and uniquely captivating, highly regarded by writers like Aosheng. She is one of Taiwan's top writers in recent years. [Content Summary] The more the playfulness fades, the more the film moves toward purity. At the edge of cinema, it raises great doubts in the audience—does this still count as a film? It directly enters into people, confronting things themselves. When characters are all firmly established and move you deeply, the result may just be the ancient light and fragments of his work—yet they are substantial. What is revealed allows us to see, what is hidden lets us imagine. Then, any situation surrounding him, past or future, is organic, sometimes overlapping with others, sometimes intersecting, sometimes remaining completely unrelated. The remaining task is simply to weave them all together. The course of events is like a long river; one cannot narrate every detail from the beginning, so it is like cutting the water with a knife and taking a sip. Hou Xiaoxian says, the worst way to select events is simply for introduction or explanation. Even if there is, Hou Xiaoxian always changes his form invisibly. The fragments of events he selects are mainly because of their inherent charm, not for tying knots or for the rise, fall, and turn of the story. When he selects fragments, you have always been at the core of the event from the beginning, so deeply immersed that he feels no need to explain himself to anyone. His interest often lies not in presenting these deeply immersed fragments with abandon, but in forgetting himself. A fragment, a shot—what connects them is not causality, but the tension lurking beneath the lens, the atmosphere permeating the frame. Consequently, his films' characteristic frugality is even more pronounced. He skillfully uses the space outside the frame, sound, and events to create something from nothing, leaving room for the audience. Due to the omissions and frugality, in editing, he often narrates events that have not yet happened in advance, without any explanation or clues, and the audience only understands later, tracing back the meaning of the preceding fragments. The audience must trace back, dig, and constantly dialogue with the entire viewing experience. The poetic approach is not through conflict but through reflection and contrast. Since suffering cannot be expressed through dramatic conflict, the result cannot be resolved by a tragic "redemption." Poetry reflects the flow of infinite time and space, contrasting the fact of human existence within it, a fact that is also fleeting. It is ultimately the fact of the human world and the world of the great universe. To this, poetry does not resolve it through redemption but through an endless, lingering lament, contemplation, and meditation. This book introduces readers to stories such as "Xiao Bi's Story," "An An's Vacation," "The Season of Missing," "Love and Dust," "A City of Sadness," and "Coffee Time."