Hou Hsiao-hsien's a Time to Live, a Time to Die

This immensely personal film by Hou Hsiao-hsien, though something of a local treasure for New Taiwan cinema still accomplishes a universalism in its' coming of age story. Each stage of the young director's life is easily relatable in at least one aspect, whether it is family, school, friendship, childhood, young love or angst. While the relatively slow pace of the editing and acting requires some adjustment in viewers' expectation of narrative, one can see that this is a portrait of life as it really is. Or rather that Hou Hsiao-hsien has come as close as possible to recapturing his memories as they were experienced.

Though it must be taken into consideration that experience in this sense is a subjective one. The camera shows what Hou wants to remember or is limited to remembering, but this makes it all the more personal. After we are introduced to various characters, including his hometown, we see what can be assumed to be a young Hou burying some money won at a game under a tall tree. Referring back to this scene after watching his family's struggles and triumphs, the image takes on a potent meaning. When the young Hou returns to the tree to reclaim the earnings, the image brings to mind one digging into their family's roots like a buried treasure. This has even more relevance in that it comes early in the film, as the director has returned to childhood to rediscover these buried memories.

As Corrado Neri writes in the essay A Time To Grow, Hou "tries to revive old pictures... re-creating the exact conditions of the past for new people." There are many scenes where a person or object is given such attention that one could see them gathered in a memory box Hou is digging through. The school photograph, his Grandmother's coins, the stamps on the windows, an old erotic book, all intimate objects that connect us, through the film, to the past. Whether it is Hou's past or a projection of our own memories through the characters of his family.

Hou says in a voiceover that opens the film that his impressions of his father are important to the story. Perhaps the best way to describe the family's relationship to the father is distant. As this is what the camera captures in the positioning of the father on screen. He is consistently at a distance from the other characters and as one can gather a strong memory of the director, always working at his desk. Another prevalent positioning of the father on screen is that he rarely, if ever faces the camera. Either he is turned facing into the distance off screen or has his back turned to the camera. This portrayal does not particularly have a negative effect of his character, as it is one of a respectful distance, not a cold negligence to the family. It seems that one of the few times when most the family come into close contact with the father is after his death lying before them. This is only one of the intimate impressions Hou manages to capture visually and, reflecting on the film, it is rich in these types of portrayals. For instance, the relationship with the Grandmother as seen on screen implies that the director can speak long and lovingly of her. This is the essence of storytelling for some, to connect us to the people and places of the past so we may live from the lessons they learned.

More on Taiwan's New Wave Cinema:
Tsai Ming-liang's The Hole