Popular reviews

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  Review by Karst ★★★★★ 18

  The feeling of crying and not knowing why you’re crying put to film. It’s a feeling so specific and frustrating yet so present and this film is addressing it in one of the most poetic ways possible. Words can’t fully describe how much this film meant to me and one of the many things this film taught me is that that’s completely okay. Of the many things this film is about, I found it to be the perfect depiction of fear. Specifically fear of life. That sounds vague and a bit pretentious and it is, but this film is fully aware of that. It’s letting you know that this fear exists, it’s asking you questions, it’s letting you know you’re not alone, and it’s reminding you why art is so god damn important.

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  Review by Dan Molloy 5

  “My uncle says we live three times as long since man invented movies.”
  “How can that be?”
  “It means movies give us twice what we get from daily life.”

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★★ 11

  Trying to indicate the scale of a movie so immense and full of life that it can’t possibly be described (only experienced), the British critic Nigel Andrews wrote that calling “‘Yi Yi’ a three-hour Taiwanese family drama is like calling ‘Citizen Kane’ a film about a newspaper.” It’s a clever line, but those who haven’t seen Edward Yang’s final masterpiece could easily mistake it for a cop-out. At a passing glance, it seems like the kind of thing someone in Andrews’ position might say when they’re too awed to do their job well. And yet, to watch “Yi Yi” is to know where the critic was coming from, and to recognize that he wasn’t surrendering to a great work of…

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  Review by Taylor Williams ★★★★ 11

  Dropping a star because I wanted more yang-yang

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  Review by iana ★★★★½ 1

  beautifully understated, reserved and thoughtful. stories don’t have to involve dramatic matters of life and death — these ideas can be examined with a simple and compassionate approach. yi yi is more than “life goes on” — it’s life goes on but is always changing, forever being shaped by every passing moment.

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  Review by YI T ★★★★★ 7

  Ota is probably one of the most wonderful characters I've ever seen on screen, I'd give everything to be with him for a day. His card trick which is done in one single take is one magical moment in cinema that I'll never forget.

  Yi Yi is one of those rare films that once it started, immediately makes me forget about everything else, it's completely immersive, and heartfelt, and honest. It has also helped me in becoming a better person, I mean, how often can you say that about a film?

  I'm in the middle of shooting a short film right now, and I'm feeling a bit lost. Watching this film is exactly what I need right now to continue…

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  Review by Josh Larsen ★★★★½ 10

  Shuffling through the photos that were taken by his 8-year-old son, a father notices that every single one focuses on the back of a person’s head. When the boy is asked about it later, he offers an explanation of both childlike logic and aged wisdom: people can’t see the backs of their heads, so he’s helping them.

  This is what Yi Yi does for all of us.

  www.larsenonfilm.com/yi-yi

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  Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★★ 3

  Edward Yang's original intention with this film upon conceptualizing the idea for it was to make a work which traced a persons life from birth to death. Quite an ambitious prospect! Yet the film as is can be described as exactly that - the film opens with a wedding and ends with a funeral. What Yang does is make a very narrative film, probably his most accessible, but this is for the purpose of breaking down the stages of life into specific characters at specific times in their lives. Rather than necessarily making these ideas accessible (though the film does, which is not a problem) it also allows one stage of life to cross paths with another, and maybe this…

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  Review by Jonathan White ★★★ 32

  I’ve been looking forward to Yi Yi for ages .. well at least a year. So many of my Letterboxd friends, whose taste and judgement I deeply respect, have rated it highly. Well, today is the day.

  I always try and tone down expectations, especially when I’m practically salivating to watch something. Although I try as hard as I can not to know anything about a film, from askance glances I knew it was a slow, slice of life, family centred story. Perfect! I love that! Jeanne Deilman, Le Quattro Volte, and my new love The Strange Little Cat are exactly in that vein, and films that I absolutely love. Conditions couldn’t be more perfect. A rainy Sunday afternoon watch,…

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 4

  90/100

  A delicately understated view of family life within a changing societal landscape and a beautiful snapshot of individual feelings and emotions; Yi Yi: A One and a Two is a monumental mess of people, places, ideas, sentiment, and interconnections. Edward Yang's film is splendidly gentle, caring and almost caressing every character as if life was their own silent guardian. The camera inaudibly observes and views these people with hushed wisdom and concrete consistency, even furthering the evidence that the camera itself wants to become one of the participants.

  This is a nearly 3-hour film, and it does feel overly slow at points, but before you know it, these people have changed or shifted in utterly resplendent ways, and it's one of the only times that I wanted to go back and relive moments before the film was even over. Sometimes, carefully crafted characters, genuine feeling, and precise direction is all you need for a scrumptious viewing experience.

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  Review by PTAbro ★★★★½ 19

  PTAbro's World Tour Stop 21: Taiwan

  Whether it was the 3 hour run time, reserved and nuanced performances, or Edward Yang's naturalistic direction (or a combination of the three), something amazing happened while watching Yi Yi. One minute, it was a superb drama, a familial slice-of-life, and the next, it was a documentary. It felt so real, so authentic, that the fact that these people and events were scripted is completely forgotten. They are a real family, real people, and not only was I watching something true actually happen, I was transported into their world. I felt possessive and protective of them. I laughed along with NJ and Ota. I yelled at Yang-Yang to stay away from that pool. I…

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  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★★★ 13

  Part of my 400 followers celebration

  Yi Yi is one of those rare films that seems to be about everything that matters in our lives. It's the story of a family and uses different generations to cover an entire life. We see youth, adolescence, marriage, middle age, and death. The stories overlap and its devastating in its cumulative buildup of life's problems. We can't see what's behind us, we forgot our own past. Everything we do might seem new to us but everything repeats. Yi Yi shows us this melancholia so central to our lives. Regrets and repeated mistakes, passed from one to another. Then we get to the final scene, a sequence so pure that it spans from the young to the old and threads everybody together. It made me cry. Yi Yi is very wise film indeed.

  My Top Films of the 2000s