What We’re Watching – August 2024

Films from Chang Cheh and Edward Yang make up our What We’re Watching this month along with an exciting popcorn flick. Read below:

The Flying Dagger (1969)

Chang Cheh was a ridiculously prolific filmmaker, having been involved in more than a hundred films between 1947 and 1993, usually directing multiple films a year during the height of his productivity in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. Best known for his films The One-Armed Swordsman, Five Deadly Venoms, and Crippled Avengers, Chang opted to forego the elaborate action set pieces that dotted his most acclaimed films for his 1969 wuxia The Flying Dagger. The picture, indebted to the darker shades of Akira Kurosawa‘s oeuvre, offers something more grounded and raw as the director dissects a particularly vicious cycle of violence.

Reportedly, The Flying Dagger was a flop upon release and left theaters after only a week — unsurprising, perhaps, since, from the first moments of its hard-hitting black-and-white prologue where male brutality is unflinchingly depicted in all its gleeful ugliness, Chang’s film sets itself up as divergent from the director’s usual fare. The plot is kept simple, the choreography is a little rougher around the edges — even the blood seems redder. It’s an austerity that he would return to, and elaborate on formally as well, later in his career with works such as Slaughter in Xian but here the pairing of lush, stylish visuals and visceral action makes for an incredibly effective combination. – Fred Barrett

The Terrorizers (1986)

Edward Yang‘s films aren’t merely about completely depoliticized notions of “the passage of time” but rather about the sociopolitical processes that constitute “time passing.” In 1985’s Taipei Story, Lung’s (played by fellow Taiwan New Wave auteur Hou Hsiao-hsien) stubborn adherence to the past, the old way of doing things, is contrasted with Chin’s (Chin Tsai) headstrong attempts at navigating the rapidly approaching world at the end of history. But against the backdrop of a rapidly modernizing, globalized Taipei, a bustling metropolis complete with imposing architecture, the characters’ double as avatars for and facets of the fragmented postmodern subject.

The Terrorizers, Yang’s third, followed Taipei Story a year later and the director took his focus on architecture even further with this chronicle of four lost souls — a voyeuristic photographer, a teenage delinquent, and a married couple struggling to maintain their relationship — whose lives overlap in strange ways. The interiors and exteriors that make up the city are rendered as mazes and this sense of disorientation carries over into the narrative itself as it explores the very nature of narrativity in relation to the real. Yang himself likened The Terrorizers to a puzzle that could be rearranged in different ways, but perhaps the image of an ever-shifting mosaic would be more apt. Either way, it is a beautiful sight to behold, filled with a devastating sadness that Yang conjures so well. – Fred Barrett

Unbreakable (2000)

I was in middle school when The Happening and The Last Airbender were released and panned by filmgoers and critics alike. As a result, I never really got into M. Night Shyamalan’s films and it wouldn’t be till last year that I saw The Sixth Sense. I’ve slowly been working my way through Shylaman’s films and I was eager to see Unbreakable given a reveal about the film that occurred years after its release, at a time when I was very much into films. Like The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable stars Bruce Willis, this time as David Dunn. After an accident occurs where Dunn is the only survivor, Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) gets in touch with Dunn and attempts to convince Dunn that he is supernatural. Price claims that Dunn has received a great gift and that he should use his inhuman ability for the greater good, to avenge and protect. At first, Dunn doesn’t believe Price but it becomes harder and harder not to. Unbreakable leads to a series of revelations and becomes a compelling superhero film with not to mention, of course, a last moment Shyamalan twist. – Alex Sitaras