Hou Hsiao-hsien 7: The Time to Live and the Time to Die (1985)

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/05/16/hou-hsiao-hsien-7-a-time-to-live-and-a-time-to-die/ We continue our discussion of the work of Hou Hsiao-hsien, this time with a focus on The Time to Live and The Time to Die, the second in his cycle of autobiographical films after The Boys from Fenkuei. We discuss what is depth in this film and talk about Hou's consideration of 'traces 'in the surfaces of his films, how the depth is often in the surfaces. We note the structuring of this film, a bildungsroman, around a series of deaths. We talk of how often the key narrative points are obscured, and make sense only in the connections the viewers can make; how Hou often films in fixed positions, so we return to the same scene but across time, and we think about how this might affect all those spaces without faces, the anticipatory space, and the remains after characters have left the scene. We also explore the dual perspective in the film, the filmmaker's and the protagonist's, often intersecting, rarely interchangeable. We mention how Hou narrates the beginning of the film and how the drama is filmed in the real places and spaces he grew up in, and the effect of dramatising fictionally, on our speculation of the effects of spaces across time in this narrative....and much more.