“If your entire life was a film, which one would it be?” Edward Yang’s A One and a Two reminded me of such a prompt, as it depicted life of four generations in a casual way, with the most unnecessary details that compose our everyday life. It starts with a crowded wedding and ends with a simple funeral, as if the audience is witnessing the life story from full blossom to decay.
Throughout the film, Edward Yang presents the narratives of every individual in a traditional Taiwan household: the middle-aged father N.J. whose family and business are both falling apart, the adolescent daughter Ting-Ting who is going through puberty and struggling with friendship and relationship and the younger son Yang-Yang who is starting to observe the world around him but facing multiple challenges. 

As a high school student, Ting-Ting is at a crossroads in her life. Having to wave goodbye to her childhood, Ting-Ting is at a loss of where to go and what to do in the future. Throughout the film, Edward Yang depicts the complicated emotional state of a high school student - her first encounter with the extreme emotions and significant events of her life, especially love and the loss of life.

At her first blossom of love, she feels a mixed feeling when she accidentally notices her neighbor Li-Li’s relationship. As she is standing at the balcony and looking down at the couple, Edward Yang uses a high angle shot to create a God’s eye view. The use of angle adds to the sense of secrecy, as if Ting-Ting is peeping at her peers to fulfill her own fantasies of a young relationship. Such “fantasy” comes true later when she starts to go on dates with Li-Li’s boyfriend (Fatty) after his previous relationship. Edward Yang uses Ting-Ting’s experience to reflect on the confusion and timidness of young love. In the scene when Ting-Ting and Fatty are in a hotel room, the long take with these two characters standing in complete silence builds up the characteristics of shy, awkward teenagers who are confused by their desires. Without conversation, the characters use body language to convey the dilemma of engage in such clandestine sexual activity under an extremely conventional culture where people see premarital sex as a sin. The scene ends with Fatty breaking the silence abruptly and running away from the hotel room, just like how their relationship ends all of a sudden. Edward Yang uses an interesting technique to connect the two generations between Ting-Ting and her father by drawing a parallel of their relationships outside of family - Ting-Ting’s first date with Fatty and NJ’s encounter of his first love Sherry happen to be of great similarities. The two couples cut across space and time, overlapping with one another. By using identical shots, Edward Yang points out the wide application of love in all generations. Despite not knowing each other’s relationship, the shots build up a more intimate and closer connection between Ting-Ting and NJ in their narratives. 

Another significant impact on Ting-Ting’s perspectives toward life is her grandmother’s accident. The grandmother falls from the stairs when taking out the trash and has a stroke, putting herself in a coma afterwards. Unlike other people in the family who are ignorant of the cause and merely taking on the role of accompaniment, Ting-Ting bears a sense of guilt in herself. At Ting-ting’s age, collapse or death is not a common subject, especially that of her loved ones. Edward Yang uses multiple shots of Ting-Ting talking to herself to create a sense of helplessness within the character. She believes that the accident is a result of her negligence - Edward Yang did not explicitly explain the cause of grandmother’s accident, thus leaving an unknown nervousness for the audience. By not showing the full story, Yang describes an authentic teenage experience where everything seems random and mysterious. 

What I love the most about the ending with the funeral scene, where Yang-Yang stood in front of the picture of grandma and started talking, like he would always do back at home before. He said, “I’m sorry, Grandma. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to you. I think all the stuff I could tell you – You must already know. Otherwise, you wouldn’t always tell me to ‘Listen.’ They all say you’ve gone away. But you didn’t tell me where you went. I guess it’s someplace you think I should know. But, Grandma, I know so little. Do you know what I want to do when I grow up? I want to tell people things they don’t know. Show them stuff they haven’t seen. It’ll be so much fun. Perhaps one day – I’ll find out where you’ve gone. If I do, can I tell everyone, and bring them to visit you? Grandma, I miss you. Especially when I see my newborn cousin who still doesn’t have a name. He reminds me that you always said you felt old. I want to tell him that I feel I am old, too.” A child’s tender voice like that struck me, as the ending seemed to be depicting a naive kid who knows nothing, but also bringing up serious life lessons. How can an elementary school kid possibly feel old? Yet Edward Yang brought to the audience a lively example of Yang-Yang’s growth throughout the film which we can all resonate with, and smile when we hear his narrative.

Work Cited(https://www.poemofquotes.com/quotes/film-tv/yi-yi-quotes)