Yi Yi Questions

Useful Trivia: NJ is played by Wu Nian-jen, one of the major figures of the New Taiwan Cinema movement, mostly as a screenwriter. He also directed the awesomely titled Buddha Bless America.


Themes:

--People generally feel that contemporary life is difficult and frustrating.
--We regret many things. Sometimes we wish we could change the past.
--Life goes on no matter what.
--Learning is painful.
--Sexual awakening is captivating and confusing
--Love has many valences
--Sexual jealousy is powerful (sexual jealousy is any type of anger that relates to love, emotions, and gender. If you see two people kissing and it angers you [especially one of those people is an ex-lover or someone you are attracted to], that is a form of sexual jealousy. Sexual jealousy can be very subtle or very intense).
--Frustration is a part of life (unless you are Yang-Yang).
--Reaction: how do we, and how should we, respond to something? Why do people spend so much time thinking of how to react?

Things to Look At
--The parallel between Ting-Ting’s and NJ’s date. They do many of the same things. Also, NJ’s dates with Sherry in the past also have many similarities with Ting-Ting’s current experiences.
Note For 262 Class: the technical term for this--linking images and themes visually--is "parallel editing".

--Metacommentary: Ting-Ting talks about a movie being “too serious”; Fatty foreshadows the “murder” that movies can show us.

–The movie discussion between Fatty and Ting-Ting.

–-“Magic scene” of Grandmother waking up to forgive Ting-Ting.

“To sleep with someone means nothing now.” –NJ. Fatty doesn’t believe this. Why is it interesting that NJ is wrong?

“I have everything. What am I afraid of?”—A-Sherry

Casual observations of sexism: the boss keeps many mistresses; the young girl at the business only answers phones and carries things. The tough women (Lili and her mom) can only assert themselves sexually. People are very quick to think negative things about Xiao Yan and Yun-Yun.

Questions

What parts of the film do you relate to? What parts of the film do you understand even if you don’t relate to it? Are there parts of the film that the think are ineffective or that make incorrect observations about people?

Is there a connection between Yang-Yang’s teacher’s relationship with young female assistants and Lili’s English teacher’s relationship with Lili?

If you are from a big city, does this film reflect how people feel and how people experience things in big city life? If you are not from a big city, how does the city affect people differently than a smaller place? How would Ting-Ting and Yang-Yang learn about love differently in a smaller town?

News mentions of Wen-Ho Lee and Matra (the French transportation company that bilked the Taiwanese government out of millions). Why mention these things?

“Thunder created all life on Earth”: Yang-Yang watches a video about nature when he sees a girl that he starts to fall in love with. How is love like a “force of nature”?

“How can I know what you see?”
“Can we only know half the truth?”—Yang-Yang

“Every day in life is a first time. Every morning is new. We never live the same day twice…”—Ota. What does Ota (the Japanese computer designer) mean?

—How is the film hopeful? We see that Ota understands life well even when his life is difficult. We see that Ting-Ting has some sense of hope: she feels that her grandmother has forgiven her, and her plant has blossomed. Yang-Yang seems to be doing fine in his attempts to understand life. What about the other characters? Are they hopeless?

“Young people always find their own way.”—Ota. Ota says this to NJ and Sherry. How are NJ and Sherry still “young”? How does this quote reflect Ting-Ting and Yang-Yang’s experiences? They have to “find their way,” and they don’t seem to get a lot of help or support from the adults.

--What characters did you like the most? Why? What characters did you dislike the most? Why? Think of the least sympathetic characters and try to think of something positive about them that we see in the move. (Example: After A-Di’s suicide attempt, we see that Xiao Yan seems really to love A-Di.)

What scene did you most enjoy, or what scene affected you the most? Why did you enjoy it? How did it affect you?

Why does the movie have Yang-Yang learn about love in a “cute” way while Ting-Ting learns about love (and sex) in a very scary way?

Why do some people always fail to make good decisions or be good people no matter what opportunities they have? A-Di is so lucky, yet he makes so many mistakes, and he continues to act badly and lie. Can we understand why he acts the way that he does? Can we be sympathetic to him? Does he remind us of ourselves or people we know?


--Why do people imitate the behavior that upsets them? Lili is disgusted by her mother’s promiscuity, yet she shows her disgust by being promiscuous herself.

A major theme in the film is sexual awakening. Yang-Yang starts to like a girl. Ting-Ting starts to develop feelings of love and desire, and she discovers that love and sex are very complicated, painful, and disturbing things. (Another point of comparison: There is a “cute” underwear shot of a girl that Yang-Yang notices. With Ting-Ting’s stories, we are more aware of the seriousness of sexuality.)

A lot of the movie looks at major themes—birth, death, love, pain—in very subtle ways. Yet near the end Fatty murders the English teacher out of sexual jealousy. This is very shocking, and it is very different from the rest of the movie. Why include this event in the movie? What might it mean?

Why do we learn about Fatty’s murder through a news story? What does that mean? What does it say about the media’s obsession with violence and sensation? (Contrast the news about violence and sensation to the Jians’ lives, which are not at all sensational.)

Can we understand why Fatty would murder the English teacher? Do we understand his feelings? Have we had similar feelings before ourselves? (The German writer Goethe said, “I can imagine myself committing the greatest crime. Nothing human is foreign to me.”)

The movie talks about “violent and killing videogames” early on: Mr. Ota says that video games tend to be violent not because computer technology is limited, but because humans don’t understand themselves. Later, we see Fatty’s murder of the English teacher recreated as a violent video game. Why do this?


Is it important to be happy? How can we be? What does this movie say about happiness?

--Does NJ love his wife? Why is it so hard to tell? Is it still hard to tell whether or not adults love each other?

--Can we be sympathetic to Min-Min even though she abandons her family during an important time?

Yun-Yun continues to love and support A-Di after A-Di has married someone else. What makes people carry a torch [love them no matter what] for others? Why do we continue to love someone long after they should no longer be part of our lives?

Are you too young to understand NJ and Sherry’s regret over the decisions they’ve made in their lives? What if one of your parents left the family to be with his or her “true love” from the past? Obviously, you would be upset, but could you understand why he or she might make such a decision?

Think of family members who work. How hard is their job? Are they happy? What does NJ’s unhappiness with the business world tell us about how much work can hurt our mind and soul?

A lot of the movie looks at major themes—birth, death, love, pain—in very subtle ways. For example, in most movies or television shows, a mother who does not want to attend her son’s wedding would make a very angry speech. In Yi Yi, the mother simply says that she doesn’t feel well and wants to go home. It is such a quiet event that we might forget how powerful it is for a mother to not stay at one of her children’s weddings. Why does the movie look at serious issues in such quiet ways? Is that how we learn about and experience things in real life?

The movie is “realistic” at first in the way that it shows slow and ordinary and banal events. But near the end, it has more “movie” events. There is a murder (we know this is a “movie” event because we don’t normally have a close experience with murder; also, Fatty talks about how movies “show us what it’s like to kill someone"). There is a fantasy sequence (Ting-Ting imagines that her grandmother has woken up). What’s the effect of the movie being mostly slow and quiet, yet near the end having violence and fantasies like in many other movies?

What about NJ’s attitude toward his kids? He is sad that “Ting-Ting will soon be someone else’s,” and he wants to be Yang-Yang’s friend because NJ’s father was not friendly. Do we understand NJ’s attitude? Do we know adults who act like NJ and have similar ideas toward parenting?