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‘a sun’ (‘yang guang pu zhao’): film review | tokyo 2019.

In his fifth feature, 'A Sun,' Taiwanese director Chung Mong-hong finds tenderness and violence in a hard-working family whose two sons grow up facing in opposite directions.

By Deborah Young

Deborah Young

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A family scrambling for economic survival falls to pieces when the two teenage sons make devastating life decisions in the moving drama from Taiwan,  A Sun ( Yang Guang Pu Zhao).  Directed and co-written by Chung Mong-hong ( Soul, Godspeed ), it poses the moral question of whether it’s possible to survive as a wholly good person in a treacherous world. This   thought-provoking drama is long but well-paced, full of incident but at the same time intimate — though shocking violence occurs just offscreen. Illuminated by deeply nuanced performances and characters to care about, it positions itself somewhere between the loving but messed-up families of Edward Yang and Ken Loach. It’s one of the memorable Asian films this year, well worth the effort of tracking down after bows in Toronto and Tokyo, and could work well in limited release with Asian cinema fans.

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Chung, a former director of TV commercials who also handles the lighting of his films under the name Nagao Nakashima, is very much in control of the desolate but poetic mood that makes the film feel so distinctive. For his part, A-wen (Chen Yi-wen), the crabby and inordinately proud father of the family, sets a tone of tension in the kitschy apartment he shares with his hairdresser wife, Chin (the magnetic Samantha Shu-chin Ko), and their sons. However, A-wen only recognizes his sensitive, considerate premed boy A-hao (Xu Guang-han); the punky A-ho (Wu Chien-ho), black sheep of the family, he self-righteously chooses to ignore.

The Bottom Line An engrossing stunner.

In a dynamic opener set in a busy restaurant, A-ho is the accomplice of a mad dog pal called Radish (Liu Kuan-ting), who chops off a rival’s hand in a restaurant, a scene that sets the action bar high. The time is 1996, a year of presidential elections in Taiwan when tensions with China were particularly high — but this is just background to the domestic story. A-wen, a crabby driving instructor whose graying hair suggests he’s chastised a few too many student drivers in his time, attends his son’s hearing only to urge the judge to lock him up as long as possible. His wife is furious with him, but A-ho just looks defeated. This brief scene speaks volumes about the family dynamics that have left this son out in the emotional cold and probably pushed him into bad company.

The other mark against A-ho is the constant comparisons Dad makes with his brother A-hao, who is undoubtedly the “sun” of the title. He always takes the high road, but his pure heart and sunny reputation deprive him, he tells a girlfriend, of “a dark corner to hide in.” It’s the first hint that no living being can be all light, all the time. When he goes to visit A-ho in a juvenile detention center that looks very much like a prison, he brings with him a young girl who is carrying A-ho’s baby. Her family has dumped her on their doorstep and their good-hearted mother has taken her in. A-ho doesn’t take the news well.

Out of the blue, in a plot twist no one is expecting, A-hao drops out of the story, and it’s like the center of the family has fallen out; the sunshine has vanished from their lives. A few years pass and A-ho and Radish are released from detention. A-wen remains stonily unforgiving and refuses to even talk to the boy, who now has a wife and child on his hands.

The second half of the film shows how a youth who has been marked as a social liability has very little chance of fulfilling his good intentions. Sober-faced but unbowed, Wu Chien-ho does a fine job making the rebellious A-ho into a human being who matters, tough enough to stand a fighting chance of straightening out his life against overwhelming forces of darkness. On a lonely road one dark and stormy night, a final, heart-rending twist shows he’s not as alone as he feared.

The last scenes, which again turn to criminal violence, broach gangster film territory, while they underline how morally messy life is. Even murder may be a necessary part of it. It’s an idea worth pondering, one that Chung reinforces with a light touch when A-ho and his mother go for a stolen bike ride in the dappled shade of their pleasant street. 

Production company: 3 NG Film Cast: Chen Yi-wen, Samantha Shu-chin Ko, Wu Chien-ho, Liu Kuan-ting Director: Chung Mong-hong Screenwriters: Chung Mong-hong, Chang Yaoshen Producers: Yeh Jufeng, Tseng Shao-chien Director of photography: Nagao Nakashima Production designer: Chao Shih-hao Costume designer: Hsu Li-wen Editor: Lai Hsiu-hsiung Music: Lin Sheng-xiang Venue: Tokyo Film Festival (World Focus) World sales: MandarinVision Co.

155 minutes

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Review: “A Sun” Is A Meticulous Family Drama Worthy of Its Golden Horse Awards

Taiwanese director Chung Mong-hong's "A Sun" weaves an intricate and entertaining tale of family misfortune.

By Anthony Kao , 29 Nov 19 10:04 GMT

Last weekend, family drama A Sun ( 陽光普照) , dominated 2019’s Golden Horse Awards (Taiwan’s Oscars). The film won in six categories—including best feature, best director, and best leading actor. Though a Chinese boycott of the awards lessened competition, A Sun deserves acclaim as one of this year’s strongest Chinese-language films. Centering on a family beset with misfortune, A Sun crafts an intricate, character-driven drama that’s compelling enough to entertain audiences throughout its two and a half hour runtime.

We Are (Unhappy) Family!

If the image of a severed human hand bubbling in soup scares you, avoid A Sun . The film begins with an act of violence that sparks a series of woes for the four-member Chen family. Three of the Chens seem like humdrum working-class Taiwanese: father A-Wen ( Chen Yi-wen ) works as a driving instructor, mother Qiu styles hair at a nightclub, and elder son A-Hao studies to retake his med school entrance exam.

Younger son A-Ho ( Wu Chien-ho ), however, doesn’t fit the mold. In an act of revenge against bullying, he and his delinquent friend Radish attack a boy nicknamed Oden at a soup restaurant (there’s a dark joke here for those who know their Asian soups ). A-Ho lands in juvenile detention, and A-Wen disowns him.

The Chen family’s woes don’t stop there though. Qiu learns A-Ho has impregnated a teenage girl named Xiao Yu, Oden’s father chases A-Wen for victim’s compensation, and silent cracks begin forming in A-Hao’s psyche. Thirty minutes in, A Sun has introduced a sprawling cast of characters, each with their own challenges and proclivities.

Meticulous Storytelling

Despite this narrative complexity, A Sun never feels overburdened. The film somehow allows even small narrative details to serve layered, meaningful purposes. For instance, A-Wen’s driving school has the slogan “seize the day, find your direction” (把握時間，掌握方向). This becomes a motif that surfaces in numerous subtle ways before becoming a core component of the film’s climax. Similarly, a quote from A-Hao gives the film its Chinese title 陽光普照, which translates directly to “sunlight reveals all.” A Sun uses rain, darkness, and sunlight to set the dramatic tone of numerous scenes; the notion of “sunlight reveals all” also takes on visual significance during the movie’s climax.

It’s also captivating to follow the characters of A Sun . The narrative strands for father A-Wen and younger son A-Ho offer the most food for thought. Those two characters have the meatiest flaws, and thus the most room to evolve throughout the film. Without giving too much away, their character arcs become elegant foils for each other.  We see the two characters each go through a series of trials that borrow from a variety of captivating subgenres—gangster flicks, dark comedies, spousal dramas—and come out different on the other side.

Focusing on A-Wen and A-Ho naturally takes some attention away from other characters. This tradeoff feels worthwhile though. All of A Sun ’s other named characters (with a few exceptions like Xiao Yu) still have enough complexity and evolution to keep the story exciting; they appear for just enough time, with just enough intensity. For instance, Radish isn’t on screen for most of the film. However, when he is, his presence meaningfully impacts the plot—thanks in part to actor Liu Kuan-Ting ‘s superb portrayal of the character’s manipulative personality.

Serious, But Not Bleak

Another distinctive aspect of A Sun is that while it depicts serious themes, it’s not overwhelmingly bleak. While not a superhero blockbuster, the film still has enough friendly reference points—family dynamics, triad gangsters—that prevent mainstream audiences from getting too depressed. Its characters might suffer misfortune, but there’s still a whiff of hope.

This represents a slight evolution for A Sun ’s director Chung Mong-hong . Chung’s previous features, like 2008’s Parking and 2016’s Godspeed , contained weighty existentialist undertones that evoked Irish writer Samuel Beckett . In those films, characters had no agency; absurd things just “happened” to them.

Contrastingly, A Sun ’s characters seem like they have the ability to affect change in their lives, as we see through A-Wen and A-Ho’s character arcs. This doesn’t mean A Sun lacks philosophical oomph. It simply has a more accessible variety, one that grounds itself in an exploration of family dynamics. Queasy moviegoers who’d dislike its violent opening might still avoid A Sun , but the film feels like it can attract a broader audience without sacrificing artistic value.

And the Golden Horse Award for Balance Goes To…

Intricate balance—that’s the name of the game for A Sun . The film takes a bevy of characters, a litany of plot details, and a smattering of serious themes, somehow fitting them all together in a coherent, captivating manner. A Sun contains just the right amount of artistry and philosophy, mixed with sufficient doses of violence and humor to take off the edge.

Most other Chinese-language films from 2019 don’t even attempt this intricate balance. On one hand, blockbusters like Ne Zha or The Wandering Earth avoid any philosophical musings and stick to conventional stories. On the other hand, on top of boycotting the Golden Horse Awards, Beijing also suppressed many movies that might push the narrative envelope and offer serious competition to A Sun this year.

Thus, alongside other examples like Nina Wu and Wet Season , A Sun offers an important reminder that 2019 wasn’t a total loss for Sinosphere cinema. While its relatively narrow focus on a “regular” family and lack of significant socio-political relevance might blunt A Sun ’s international sellability as an art film, anyone interested in Taiwanese movies should check it out.

A Sun (Chinese: 陽光普照) —Taiwan. Dialog in Mandarin with some Taiwanese. Directed by Chung Mong-hong. Running time 2hr 35min. First released November 1, 2019. Starring Chen Yi-wen, Ko Shu-chin, Wu Chien-ho, Liu Kuan-ting. 

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A Sun Reviews

The family drama's subtlety and care don't mesh well with the crime drama, which feels underbaked. The lack of energy in the even-handed direction doesn't help, either. The family drama does work... thanks to the strong performances of the cast.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | May 13, 2022

A brilliantly colored film with high contrasts... but the filming is not strictly ornamental. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Aug 27, 2021

A Sun is beautifully shot and crafted, but it's the performances especially those by Wu and Chen, that keep it grounded.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Jul 29, 2021

This is a tale of tragedy, reconciliation and crime punctuated with effective comedic touches, becoming an exposé of parental fault, disintegration and collapse.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 25, 2021

A Sun is a bold, involving tale of crime, punishment, tragedy and healing -- all within a seemingly ordinary family of four in Taiwan.

Full Review | Mar 11, 2021

A universal family drama that explores sibling rivalry [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Feb 15, 2021

Grand yet intimate, the film is beautiful and brutal. It's also excellent storytelling.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Feb 3, 2021

Not only is the film visually outstanding, but it takes us on a most unpredictable narrative journey where characters who seem initially unsympathetic finally come to be people we genuinely care for.

Full Review | Jan 9, 2021

One of the richest cinematographic experiences of the year, a mature film that radiates emotion and invites you to grow with its protagonists. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jan 1, 2021

The story doesn't cover a lot of ground, but what it does we feel we know intimately. And every so often, there's a scene so touching or tense that you want to turn away.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 30, 2020

A valuable entry in the Netflix library. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 5, 2020

An engrossing stunner.

Full Review | Oct 5, 2020

A Sun radiates with emotional power, telling an intimate story while avoiding all the traps that could have sunk it into cheap melodrama.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 8, 2020

This epic two-and-a-half hour examination of unaddressed grief and unspoken expectations is punctuated by suicides, pregnancies and gangland violence.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 10, 2020

Chung takes heavy, economic, social, and intimate struggles of one middle-class family and trusts the audience to find something relatable and universal in their story.

Full Review | Mar 27, 2020

Powerful, mature family drama with violence, swearing.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 7, 2020

As earnest and thoughtful as A Sun can be, its sheer length has us parsing the differences between languishing and lingering.

Full Review | Jan 24, 2020

A Sun crafts an intricate, character-driven drama that's compelling enough to entertain audiences throughout its two and a half hour runtime.

Full Review | Nov 29, 2019

As wrenching and resonant a cinematic experience as can be found in any country this year...

Full Review | Nov 25, 2019

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

A family of four fractures under the weight of unmet expectations, unexpected tragedy, and uncompromising pride. A family of four fractures under the weight of unmet expectations, unexpected tragedy, and uncompromising pride. A family of four fractures under the weight of unmet expectations, unexpected tragedy, and uncompromising pride.

• Mong-Hong Chung
• Yaosheng Chang
• Chien-Ho Wu
• Yi-Wen Chen
• Samantha Shu-Chin Ko
• 48 User reviews
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• 10 wins & 22 nominations

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• Trivia Official submission of Taiwan for the 'Best International Feature Film' category of the 93rd Academy Awards in 2021.
• Soundtracks Distant Journey Lyrics by Mong-Hong Chung Music & Performed by Sheng-Xiang Lin [Theme Song]

User reviews 48

• Dec 31, 2020
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• November 1, 2019 (Taiwan)
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• Runtime 2 hours 36 minutes
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A Sun (2020) – Netflix Film Review

Seize The Day

A Sun is a simple tale (albeit a rather long one) about a fractured family attempting to heal past wounds through a tragedy that brings everyone together. When you dive a little deeper however, this Asian film has multiple layers hidden within its aesthetic, themes and underlying message that make it a profound and wonderful cinematic blockbuster.

The story wastes no time getting right to the heart of the drama. Trouble-maker Chieng Jang-Ho (or A-Ho as he’s more commonly known as) is thrown into a Juvenile Centre after chopping a boy’s hand off in vicious fashion. It’s the last straw for his Father A-Wen who refuses to acknowledge his existence and pours all of his efforts into his “perfect” brother A-Hao instead. When tragedy suddenly strikes, the fractured family attempts to heal and move past their painful differences, culminating in a two-act structure – one that sees the second half of the film jump forward 3 years as the past continues to loom in the shadows.

To give much more away would be a disservice to the story but it’s worth persevering with this one as the slow pacing and long-cuts make this a tough sell, especially during the first 45 minutes or so where the characters are introduced and the pacing slows to a snail’s crawl. If you can stick it out, A Sun opens up in the best possible way, bringing with it some really powerful messages around healing, forgiveness and inner-peace that ripples through much of the picture. 

Aesthetically, the sun is a consistent metaphor here, especially after A-Hao’s emotional speech about this bright star and quite why it’s so profound at the halfway point of the picture. From here on out every scene takes on a whole new meaning. Scenes regularly use a clever dose of shade and light, bathing some characters in shadow while others are picturesque and gleaming in the bright sunlight. This also spills effortlessly into one of the other themes here – good and evil. While not quite as profound and poignant as that of healing (especially given the dominating colour green used a lot of the way through the first hour), the second half of the film certainly plays with this idea in a big way.

There’s some wonderful compositional tricks used here too, using the aforementioned shade and sunlight to paint a much deeper portrait of what’s going on. Seeing everything we’ve learnt come together during the final scenes of the film is an incredibly powerful moment that brings everything together in the most beautiful way. Well-acted, profoundly deep and thematically poignant, A Sun is a brilliant film and one that’s perfect fodder to dissect and discuss. A Sun absolutely justifies it’s 150 minute run-time and while it may not be the best film of the year, nor will it get the attention it perhaps deserves, it’s another example of just how strong Asian cinema is right now compared to Hollywood.

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• Verdict - 8.5/10 8.5/10

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A Sun (2019)

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What it's about.

In The Sun, a family of four is dealt with tragedy after tragedy, beginning with the younger sun A-ho's sudden incarceration. The mother is sympathetic but the father all but shuns him as he chooses to throw all his affection to A-hao, the older brother, and his med school pursuits instead. Themes of crime, punishment, family, and redemption are then explored in gorgeous frames and mesmerizing colors with director Chung Mong-hong doubling as the film's cinematographer. 

Despite itself, The Sun never falls into cliche melodrama territory. Its heavy themes are undercut by naturalistic acting and poetic shots, resulting in a deeply emotional but balanced film. Rich in meaning and beauty, The Sun will surely stay with you long after your first watch.

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Powerful, mature family drama with violence, swearing.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Explores complicated relationships in families: si

Complexity is key: lead characters undergo signifi

An early brutal scene in which a man's hand is cho

Occasional profanity: "f--k," "s--t," "ass."

Parents need to know that A Sun is a Taiwanese film released in Mandarin that's streaming on Netflix with English subtitles. At more than two-and-a-half hours in length, the movie covers several years in the lives of one intricately complex family. It's a highly emotional film, with finely-detailed characters…

Positive Messages

Explores complicated relationships in families: sibling rivalry, parental approval or disapproval, effects of tragedy on fragile connections. Asks if redemption is ever possible, and under what circumstances.

Positive Role Models

Complexity is key: lead characters undergo significant changes, mostly for the better, as the story is told. Dishonest, unforgiving behaviors slowly, and painfully, give way to compassion, loyalty, and unconditional love.

Violence & Scariness

An early brutal scene in which a man's hand is chopped off by a machete. Beatings, threats, and intimidation in a juvenile detention center. A lengthy sequence finds an angry man spewing excrement from a sewage truck with abandon.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that A Sun is a Taiwanese film released in Mandarin that's streaming on Netflix with English subtitles. At more than two-and-a-half hours in length, the movie covers several years in the lives of one intricately complex family. It's a highly emotional film, with finely-detailed characters confronting and negotiating difficult, life-changing events and relationships. On-screen violence includes an early brutal scene in which a man's hand is gruesomely chopped off by a machete. Later sequences show fighting and a young man intimidated and beaten by a gang of delinquents. In addition, there are both suspenseful story elements and very sad moments. Viewers can expect occasional expletives, i.e., "f--k," "s--t," and "ass." Characters smoke. A lengthy sequence finds an angry man spewing excrement from a sewage truck with abandon. For mature teens only, this movie may evoke thoughtful discussion about the dynamics and universality of "family." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

In A SUN's explosive opening sequence, a volatile young hooligan is arrested after he chops off the hand of an enemy. His trouble-prone teen accomplice, A-Ho (Wu Chien-Ho), is sentenced to three years in juvenile detention. A-Ho's dad, Wen (Chen Yi-Wen) is unforgiving and encourages the court to harshly punish the boy. He denounces A-Ho, and declares that he now has only one son, A-Hoa (Xu Guang-Han), a sterling student and outstanding young man. A-Ho's mother Miss Quin (Samantha Ho) is devastated. Only a short time later, young Xiao-Yu (Wu Dai-Ling) appears at Wen's home; she's pregnant with A-Ho's child. As Miss Quin deals with this second calamity, Wen remains unmovable. Even though he's facing challenges of his own, A-Hoa offers solace and support to both his mother and the fragile Xiao-Yu. Then, a heartbreaking tragedy occurs and the family is shattered. The next years follow their unsteady attempts to heal. A child is born; A-Ho is released; Wen faces another father's fury. Only when a new threat faces the family will they have a chance to restore the delicate balance of their lives.

Is It Any Good?

Writer-director Chung Mong-Hong has created a gem. Stunning performances breathe life into masterfully-drawn characters in a story that is as relevant and surprising as it is emotionally satisfying. The universality of experiences and family relationships in this tale set in Taiwan are what make this multiple-award winning film especially effective. A Sun is long, but remarkably compelling. Scenes are deliberate, but never feel slow. Most viewers, in any language, will be fully engaged, rooting for these flawed, relatable, struggling people as they make their way through difficult times. Kudos to the entire production: cinematography, editing, music, and art direction are all excellent. Highly recommended for mature teens and their families.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the value of seeing films made in other countries and/or cultures. What did you learn about the Taiwanese family in A Sun that was relatable to your own family? How was the community in which they lived similar or different from yours? Were you surprised by the similarities or differences?

A-Hoa's story was shocking and sad. As you look back, think about which events or moments the filmmakers included to foreshadow what A-Hoa was contemplating.

What is a "character arc?" Wen, the father, had the most profound character arc. What events or moments motivated his evolving behavior? How did your feelings about Wen change?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : January 24, 2020
• Cast : Wu Chien-Ho , Samantha Ko , Chen Yi-Wen
• Director : Chung Mong-Hong
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Brothers and Sisters
• Run time : 156 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : March 2, 2022

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Netflix Has One of the Year’s Best Films With Taiwan’s ‘A Sun’ — Here’s Why You Didn’t Know About It

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You may not have heard of the 2019 crime drama “ A Sun ,” the fifth fiction feature from acclaimed Taiwanese director and cinematographer Chung Mong-hong. (His 2008 debut, “Parking,” premiered at Cannes in Un Certain Regard.) You almost certainly haven’t seen it; after screening at festivals including Toronto 2019 and Palm Springs 2020, it arrived on Netflix in January without fanfare. After Variety named it the best film of 2020, it’s getting a lot more attention — but this film’s happy ending is also a cautionary tale.

This is what really sets “A Sun” apart: Not only had this film escaped the public’s eye, it eluded critics’ as well. “A Sun” has nine reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and none on Metacritic. Full disclosure: The unaware included IndieWire. Critic David Ehrlich acknowledged that the Variety selection was the first time the film landed on his radar, but after viewing it he agreed that this film demands serious Oscar consideration . “Movies have never been more accessible,” Ehrlich wrote, “and they’ve never been harder to find.”

Welcome to 2021, where a theatrical release is neither required for review, nor should it be treated as the sole arbiter of quality. Steve McQueen’s five “Small Axe” films (Amazon), “American Utopia” (HBO Max), and “Soul” (Disney+) are among the best reviewed of the year. Understanding how everyone overlooked “A Sun” — and how that can be prevented in the future — requires some forensic work.

The Mandarin-language “A Sun” had its world premiere at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival as one of 55 titles in the Contemporary World Cinema section. Toronto gets most of its energy from awards-oriented selections, star appearances, and studio premieres, with limited bandwidth for smaller films. At 156 minutes, from a country without no real profile at the U.S. box office (Ang Lee’s “Eat Drink Man Woman” received an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film in 1995, with his “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” an Oscar winner and a blockbuster in 2000), “A Sun” didn’t surface against higher-profile films in the TIFF section like “Bacurau,” “Beanpole,” and “Les Misérables.”

Variety and the Hollywood Reporter didn’t cover the film out of TIFF, but published favorable reviews after its October premiere at the Tokyo Film Festival. “A Sun” went on to a November 2019 theatrical release in Taiwan, and won most of the top prizes at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards. Stateside theatrical distributors showed little interest. Around that time, Netflix acquired the rights.

In a pre-pandemic January, critics paid far less attention to non-theatrical releases. When “A Sun” debuted on Netflix January 24 — also known as day two of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, guaranteed to distract every film critic in North America — it largely escaped the notice of the streamer’s 60 million domestic subscribers.

“A Sun” now has its place, but this is more than a single film slipping through the cracks. Theatrical distribution used to be the all-powerful curatorial tool, but it’s now mired in existential crisis as we edge toward a streaming-first world. That leaves everyone — critics as well as the audience — faced with the tyranny of thumbnails: Hundreds of thousands of key-art rectangles representing choices that stretch into infinity. Who’s got the marketing moxie to cope with that?

In a healthier world, Netflix has theaters in New York and Los Angeles where it could showcase awards-favorite titles. Even so, this one might not clear the mark; it’s an acquisition, not an original, and it’s Taiwan’s submission for the 2021 International Oscar competition.

More feasible: Netflix could curate a section of top festival films. As it stands, it takes absurd controversy to elevate these (see: the Cannes-premiered “Cuties”). Designate a weekday for their debuts. Netflix has so many of these titles; the failure to effectively aggregate them is a missed opportunity for low-cost, high-impact promotion. The media would love a Netflix Classics or similar, with two or three titles a week isolated from the clutter.

In their sheer volume, movies are becoming more like books. The New York Times only reviews a handful of books during the week, with Sunday’s standalone New York Times Book Review dedicated to them. Could outlets create a dedicated space to identify films like “A Sun”? These are films with a limited audience, but it’s a loyal and intensely interested one.

In the meantime, do check out “A Sun” on Netflix. It makes my own 10 best list.

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Taiwanese Masterpiece ‘A Sun’ Has Been Hiding in Plain Sight All Year (Column)

Film critic Peter Debruge's favorite film of 2020 has been widely available on Netflix since last January. Director Chung Mong-hong explains what the film says about his home country, and why this family drama is too universal to be overlooked.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Last February, just before the pandemic upended virtually everything about how the film industry operates, “Parasite” made history at the Academy Awards. The ingenious South Korean thriller became the first international film to “overcome the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles” and win best picture, as director Bong Joon Ho phrased it at the podium.

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European movies do fine in what’s now known as the “international feature” category — especially those from the four “FIGS” markets, where French, Italian, German and Spanish are spoken. But Asia, and especially East Asia, has gone largely overlooked by the Academy, despite the fact that, in this critic’s estimation, three of the most important films of the 21st century hail from that corner of the globe: Edward Yang’s “Yi Yi: A One and a Two” (Taiwan), Lee Chang-dong’s “Secret Sunshine” (South Korea) and Wong Kar Wai’s “In the Mood for Love” (Hong Kong) make my top 10 of the 2000s.

Now, add to that another masterpiece: “ A Sun ,” a wrenching and ultimately redemptive family drama from Taiwanese director Chung Mong-hong . From its very first scene, the film is a knockout, and one that touches on universal themes of a family shaken by tragedy, even as its story doubles as a critique of Taiwan today — in much the same way “Parasite” can be enjoyed by anyone, while offering extra layers for those familiar with Korean culture.

I didn’t even realize it at the time, but Netflix had quietly acquired this powerful film — which I’d been fortunate enough to see on the festival circuit in fall 2019 — and slipped it onto the platform on Jan. 24, 2020. That’s not entirely unusual. Netflix acquires and distributes plenty of overseas treasures (this one won five Golden Horse Awards in its native Taiwan), saving its publicity efforts for starry original productions like “Marriage Story” and “Mank.”

But “A Sun” has become something of a personal cause for me, and this week, with Oscar voting underway, it feels important to remind Academy members that the movie — which is among 15 contenders shortlisted for the international feature prize — is not just some obscure and impenetrable Asian film, but a treasure that’s been hiding in plain sight all year. Nor is Chung’s style the slightest bit difficult for Americans to grasp.

The filmmaker, who got an MFA in filmmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, recognizes what it means to feel alienated by “foreign films.” By Chung’s own admission, he decided to study cinema after being frustrated by a screening of Greek director Theo Angelopoulos’ four-hour “The Traveling Players.” He was in college at the time, and it was not unusual for European art films that had received international festival acclaim to screen in Taiwan. This one dealt with “a lot of chaos, battles, situations and social unrest” but to Chung felt like “watching people walking around” for four hours, so he fell asleep. “For Westerners, it may be easy to understand, but for us, it is very inaccessible.”

While “A Sun” is also informed by culturally specific elements, Chung was careful not to make those obstacles to the audience. “If we want to talk about inspirations and ideas for this film, we probably have to think about history after the KMT, the previous communist party, relocated from China to Taiwan in 1949,” he says. From then until China lifted martial law almost four decades later, Chung explains, “we went through a lot of suppression and oppressions. After we opened up in the 1990s, everything became liberated, but at the same time, it also became very chaotic.” During this time, he says, “Taiwan has become more and more uninhabitable.”

Not long afterward, however, Chung was having hot pot for dinner with his family, “and one image suddenly came to my mind: What if there was a hand floating in the hot pot?” he wondered. That visual inspired the opening scene of “A Sun,” which launches the film in motion with a shocking act of violence — but also serves a narrative purpose.

“The hands at the beginning are actually a metaphor,” the director explains. “These two hands, there’s a disconnection to them.” When one is severed from the body, “it becomes incomplete,” which is echoed a short time later in the film — about a traditional Taiwanese family with two sons. The elder sibling, A-Ho (Greg Hsu), is a shining all-achiever, doted on by his father (Chen Yi-wen) and bound for medical school. The younger, A-Hao (Greg Hsu), doesn’t get the same attention from his parents and acts out as if to compensate. Whether willing or not, he’s an accomplice to the brutal hot-pot behanding and sent to juvenile detention for his involvement.

But then something happens (a twist described in the next three paragraphs, so be aware of spoilers) that’s every bit as disorienting for the family as that opening scene was for the audience: Without warning or explanation, A-Ho commits suicide, and suddenly this family unit is without its right hand — or, to use another of the film’s symbols, it loses the son/sun on whom the father had focused all of his energy. Can the family adjust its orbit, now that its shining star has been snuffed and the black sheep is the only son that remains?

“In 2006, I made a documentary called ‘Doctor,’” Chung says. “During the filmmaking process, I spent two to three years with this father, whose son passed away. Some people claim that he committed suicide, but his father didn’t want to admit that, and at the end of the film, he still didn’t know what happened.” The mystery and unanswerable ambiguity of that situation informed how Chung treated A-Hao’s fate, where the cause of the character’s suicide was less important than how it affects the survivors.

“I think that the first documentary I made has a huge impact on me, even now,” he acknowledges. “Committing suicide is definitely a very strong statement. After such a huge incident happens to your life, ideas start to look differently now — just like warfare can create a huge impact on a society. So after the suicide, I believe the father, the mother, the younger brother, they will have a different perspective to reflect on everything that happens in their life.”

These two startling events impact audiences as well, putting them on edge for whatever surprises Chung might have in store — and while “A Sun” is certainly unpredictable, nothing quite so upsetting happens again.

In “A Sun,” the unanswered questions are focused on the microcosm of easily relatable father-son bonds, but as Chung points out, “I am actually using this family as a metaphor to embody or symbolize that the whole country is crumbling.” And Taiwan is hardly alone, as division and protests have sprung up in other countries as well. “Having trust between people has become a very critical issue around the world,” he adds — and that makes the film’s message of forgiveness and reconciliation all the more resonant to audiences.

Thinking internationally, the best-known Taiwanese filmmaker is no doubt Ang Lee, whose films “The Wedding Banquet” and “Eat Drink Man Woman” were nominated for Oscars in the early ’90s. Around the same time, Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien were also attracting consideration acclaim for Taiwanese cinema. Today, even though Yang has died and Lee moved on to Hollywood, the local industry still operates in the shadow of these auteurs.

After film school, “when I returned to Taiwan, the situation with the film industry at the time was like a dead end,” Chung recalls. “At that time, the box office was terrible and no one was making movies in Taiwan. Many people will say that my films are similar to those made by Edward Yang, but I don’t actually have a lot of personal connections with him or Hou Hsiao-hsien. The film critics believe these ‘new waves’ actually inspired all the subsequent movies or directors, but all the things we have made subsequently cannot surpass them. I respect [those directors], but I don’t think that we should follow them anymore.”

“A Sun” is Chung’s fifth narrative feature and quite clearly the work of a major director, though few Americans know his name — this despite the fact that he began his career at Cannes (with 2008’s “Parking”) and has been an international festival name ever since. But with the movie readily available to anyone with a Netflix subscription, that’s easy enough to fix.

As it happens, the same week “A Sun” hit the streaming service, Korean American director Lee Isaac Chung’s “Minari” was premiering at Sundance, offering yet another poignant example of strong Asian storytelling, this one a portrait of an immigrant family in Oklahoma — an American film shamefully relegated to the Golden Globes’ “foreign language” category.

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A Sun follows a Taipei family through thunder and loss

In this drama of a dutiful couple and the divergent fates of their two sons, Taiwanese auteur Chung Mong-Hong strikes a perfect balance of light and shade, violence and healing. It’s one of the most impressive films of recent times.

▶ A Sun is available on Netflix .

• Spoiler alert: this review reveals a plot twist.

A Sun starts off looking like a very dark thriller. Two young men swathed in plastic raincoats ride what turns out to be a stolen motor-scooter through Taipei’s neon-lit night streets in a tropical downpour. There are a few terse words exchanged about their target’s location as they reach the back door of a cheap restaurant, then barrel through corridors into the dining area, where the older of the two attacks a diner with a machete. The victim falls to the floor in agony, an artery spurting blood from his arm. His severed right hand has landed in a simmering hotpot of soup.

Although gentle music offsets the horror of the scene, this is not the film’s only depiction of brutality: more violence, much of it mental, will follow across the film’s two-and-a-half hours. But the deliberate shock of the opening kickstarts a narrative that gradually reveals itself to be more about healing than destruction. A Sun, which has been shortlisted for the Best International Feature Film Oscar, is the most piercing and engrossing account of a family tested to near-ruin since the late Edward Yang’s masterpieces A Brighter Summer Day (1991) and A One and a Two (aka Yi Yi, 2000). It’s one of the most impressive films of recent times.

The focus is on the lower-middle-class Chen family (father, Wen, a driving instructor; mother, Qin, a hairdresser) with two adolescent sons: the elder boy Hao, handsome and well-liked, has failed the entrance exam for medical school and is cramming to try again; the younger boy Ho, jealous and resentful of his brother’s popularity and status in the family, has drifted into delinquency. The severed hand incident was a reprisal for the victim Oden’s bullying of Ho; the machete was wielded by Ho’s dangerous and possibly psychotic friend Radish, to whom he turned for help, although Ho maintains that the intention was merely to scare off Oden.

The first blow to the Chen family’s integrity comes when Ho is sentenced to juvenile detention. The second comes when a woman turns up on their doorstep to announce that her 15-year-old ward Yu is pregnant by Ho. The third and most devastating comes when Hao commits suicide. Ho is released early for good behaviour, but finds the family shattered: Wen disowns him and won’t speak to him. And there’s a major aftershock three years later when Radish is released from jail and starts pressuring Ho for “favours” to discharge his “debt”.

Two key motifs govern the sprawling but never discursive plot. The father Wen keeps parroting the Confucian motto of the driving school where he works: “Seize the day, decide your path.” This is in tune with the KMT state ideology of Taiwan in the 60s and 70s, when it was reflected in numerous ‘improving’ melodramas about social cohesion made by the government’s own film studio, and it finds an ironic echo in Ho’s pragmatic (but not entirely principled) break with his delinquent past as he works to provide for his young wife and newborn son.

Not as ironic, though, as Wen’s failure to live by the motto himself: he retreats into a sullen silence when his favoured son kills himself and his unloved second son “lets him down”. The discovery late in the film that Hao kept but never used the driving-school diaries (the motto emblazoned on the cover each year) given by Wen suggests that it meant little to him either; indeed, he may have felt it as one more aspect of the pressure from his father to succeed.

The other key motif, deployed throughout the film, is sunlight and shade – revealed to have been at the forefront of Hao’s mind at the time of his suicide by his classmate and potential girlfriend Zhen. She describes their visit to Taipei Zoo (where Hao observed that even the wild animals seek the shade) and reads out the final text she received from Hao, in which he complained that he felt trapped in sunlight, the shade beyond his reach. This motif is announced in the film’s Chinese title: Yangguang Pu Zhao translates literally as ‘Sunlight Spreads Everywhere’ and more poetically (with apologies to Jonathan Safran Foer) as ‘Everything Is Illuminated’.

This is the closest the film comes to ‘explaining’ Hao’s suicide, but the motif reaches a kind of summation in the closing scene of Ho taking his mother for a ride through dappled sunlight on a stolen bicycle. The scene inverts both the night, rain and blood of the opening scene and Qin’s memory (seen in flashback) of Ho as an infant demanding to be taken on extended bike-rides by his mother.

The film is accordingly careful not to illuminate many matters too brightly. Much of the psychology is left to the viewer’s conjectures, although there’s plenty of detail – and much in the facial expressions and reactions of the unimprovable cast – to fuel a sense of knowing and understanding these characters.

Some of the details refer back to director-writer Chung Mong-Hong’s earlier films, which remain unaccountably little-known in the West. The delinquent who loses his hand, for instance, and who reappears late in the film to teach Ho what it feels like to be disabled, had a prototype in Chung’s fiction debut Parking (2008), played there as an ex-gangster by Jack Kao. Troubled father-son relationships recur throughout his work. And the situation of an uncomprehending father losing his son to suicide stretches right back to his early documentary feature Doctor (2006), made in the US .

Chung, who also photographs his films under his Japanese pseudonym Nakashima Nagao, brings uncommon skills to both his invention of incidents and his depictions of characters growing through formative experiences. He has a parallel career as one of Taiwan’s most successful directors of commercials (he has written about working as DP on many of them for Hou Hsiao-Hsien), but makes a ‘personal’ feature film every two to three years and has a fairly spectacular track record: The Fourth Portrait (2010), Soul (2013) and Godspeed (2016) are all adventurous movies with clever narrative twists and deeply felt emotions, spiked with black humour and the odd terrifying glimpse of violence.

But A Sun trumps all his previous work, partly because it has more interesting female characters, partly because it makes less of its genre underpinnings, and mostly because its vision of social hardships and travails is so warmly inclusive.

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Review: A Sun (陽光普照)

By brian hioe, 語言: english p hoto credit: a sun.

DESPITE ITS release last year to much domestic acclaim, winning best film in 2019’s Golden Horse Awards, A Sun has received a new wave of critical attention internationally after making Variety ’s list of best films of the year last month. With the film easily accessible on Netflix, A Sun making it to the list is like to encourage future Netflix acquisitions of Taiwanese film, as well as Netflix funding of Taiwanese productions—particularly with the film industry of many nations around the world unable to operate due to COVID-19, but Taiwan’s domestic film industry being relatively unaffected due to the country’s successes fighting off COVID-19.

Film still. Photo credit: A Sun

The themes that preoccupy in A Sun recur through much contemporary Taiwanese film and television. In particular, in the wake of incidents such as the Cheng Chieh subway attack in 2014 that left four dead, much contemporary Taiwanese film and television has focused on the effects of violent crimes committed by young people. One observes such topical focus in films such as 2017 television series, Days We Stared at the Sun , which shares several of its lead actors with A Sun , hit 2019 drama The World Between Us , and 2020 film The Painting of Evil .

So, too, with A Sun , which focuses on the fallout on the Chen family after their second son, the troubled high school student A-Ho, is arrested after a violent attack on a fellow student committed with a friend, Radish, that leaves the victim missing his hand. It is subsequently found that A-Ho’s girlfriend, Xiao-yu, has become pregnant with his child, while the Chen family patriarch, A-wen, fends off the demand of the victim’s father for monetary reparation—though this is played primarily for laughs.

In the aftermath of the turmoil, A-Ho’s older brother, the star student A-Hao, commits suicide, feeling the pressure of the family’s expectations on him. A-Ho subsequently struggles to rehabilitate himself to society after being released from jail and marrying Xiao-yu to raise their child. But several years later, A-Ho is confronted by Radish, now released from jail, who feels that A-Ho owes him for leaving him to rot in jail.

Though a highly competent work, much of A Sun ’s plot skews toward melodrama. However, A Sun is well-composed in terms of plot and pacing, never coming across as overbearing or too intent on trying to impart some message to viewers.

Themes of socioeconomic inequality as touched on in the film. A-wen, the Chen family father, works as a driving instructor, who has set his motto as being “Seize the Day, Decide Your Path”—suggesting that one can rise above circumstances with enough willpower—but has clearly not done so himself. After his release from jail, A-Ho works in a car wash and a convenience store, among other jobs, while Radish seems to have been pushed toward a life of gangster crime by poverty. However, this does not translate into broader socioeconomic commentary in the manner of other recent Taiwanese films that have honed in on the issue, such as The Great Buddha + or The Bold, The Beautiful, and the Corrupt .    

The film is primarily carried by the skill of its actors. Wu Chen-ho’s A-Ho and Liu Kuan-ting’s Radish are a well-matched duo, much as they were playing the two main characters in Days We Stared at the Sun . However, Radish fails to achieve depth beyond a representation of radical evil born from socioeconomic inequality, and his appearance in the film as the bad influence who comes back to trouble A-Ho after he has “gone straight” is too derivative a plot element.

Celebrating a God’s Birthday with a Temple Rave

It is a daring directorial moving killing off Greg Hsu’s role of A-Hao approximately one-third through the film, in order to have the rest of the character deal with his passing, and to shift the focus back onto A-Ho. But the results leave one wanting that A-Hao could have seen more development as a character.

On the other hand, Chen Yi-wen, who plays A-Wen, the Chen family father, is given a chance to truly demonstrate his talents in the film, resulting in a well-deserved Best Leading Actor award win at the Golden Horses. This is to be contrasted as to when Chen was cast as a more two-dimensional, even stereotypically villainous character in other recent Taiwanese films, as in The Great Buddha + and Classmate Minus . Chen shines in evoking both a comedic and serious demeanor in those roles as well, but having Chen play a sympathetic, working-class father proves a far more effective use of his talents than when Chen is typecast as playing corrupt politicians.

Either way, in spite of some of its flaws, A Sun still proves a stronger showing among the Taiwanese domestic films of the past few years. It is a film very much worth watching, as a reflection of the topical concerns that undergird much of contemporary Taiwanese society.

A Sun Has a Beautiful Ending. Here’s What it Means.

Netflix’s new Taiwanese drama film, ‘ A Sun ,’ meticulously explores the depths of all of its characters and unravels their relationships as they delve into the choppy waters of events that send them scrambling. Instead of presenting a typical black and white storyline where lines between good or bad are quite profound, the film perfectly captures the real emotional entanglements that all of its characters get captured in. So further down in this article, we’ll be exploring all the consequential decisions of the characters of the film that eventually lead to its powerful ending.

Plot Summary

The younger son, A-ho, of a Taiwanese middle-class family, ends up in a juvenile detention center after he gets involved in a very serious crime. In the meantime, while his father stops acknowledging his existence, the elder son, A-hao, struggles with existence and drifts into depression. Their world comes crashing down when A-hao ends up committing suicide. For a while, it almost seems like all the happiness has been sucked right out of their lives. But at the end of the day, they still manage to find their way back to one another and help each other get through tragic events of their past.

The Ending: “The Promise of a New Dawn”

The ending of ‘A Sun’ is a culmination of all the decisions that its pivotal characters end up making. It portrays how a family learns to deal with grief and eventually accepts the inevitable, coming into peace with all of their previous misfortunes. The ending is more or less a representation of the final period of withdrawal that the family goes through before it learns to let go. It is not a period of happiness, but it gives them hope, emotional relief and most of all, it heals them.

A-hao is one character who abruptly drops out of the film after the first half, but it’s his devastating decisions that later leave an impact on the rest of his family. A-hao comes off as the ideal son who gets good grades, treats everyone with respect, and works hard to be a doctor someday.

Everyone assumes that since he’s doing so well in life, he must be content with it. However, his optimistic demeanor just blinds everyone. While the rest of his family gets too engrossed in the mistakes of the other criminal son, A-hao slowly dies inside and ends up committing suicide. He takes his silence with him and leaves behind a huge mess where his family painfully grieves his death, clueless about what led to it.

In contrast to A-hao, A-ho proves to be the problem child of the family, who always lands himself in trouble. With one of his delinquent pals named Radish, he gets himself involved in a serious crime and is sent to a juvenile detention center. Amidst all of this, his father, A-wen turns a blind eye towards him and even starts believing that he only has one son.

A-ho’s transformation begins soon after his brother’s death. Before it, A-ho was short-tempered, irresponsible and even envious of his brother’s achievements. But as soon as he gets out of the detention camp, he picks up several jobs to support his family.

Unfortunately for him, the events of his dark past turn out to be far too consequential. His pal, Radish, returns after completing his own sentence and makes him believe that he can still control him. A-ho again becomes his victim and starts doing all the dirty work for him. Eventually, it’s all the grief from his brother’s death that still keeps him on the right side of the road and a ray of hope shines on him when Radish gets killed.

A-wen and his Wife

A-wen’s story turns out to be far more complex than the rest of the characters. While the rest of his family openly deals with the grief of A-hao’s death, he completely shuts himself off and preaches about “seizing your day and deciding your path.” Even when his son, A-ho, is released from prison, he ignores him and tries to convince him that he only had one son. His grief for his dead son goes through several stages. He first shows anger towards his family and even blames himself. Then he isolates himself. And then eventually, he finally accepts his son’s death and learns to appreciate what he has left.

Much later in the film, when A-wen, like always, preaches about his “Carpe Diem” credo, his wife confronts him and tells him that they laugh at him when he does that. She tells him that if he had implemented that in his own life, he would be more successful than he is today. This is when he reveals it to her that, despite his stoic demeanor, he was always looking out for A-ho. When he realized that Radish was sucking their son back into his old grim life, he even killed the young boy just to save his son. A-wen eventually does prove that he “decides his own path” and as cold as he may seem towards A-ho, he still loves him.

In the closing scene of the film, A-ho and his mother go for a ride on a stolen bicycle and as his mother gazes up in the sky, the sun shines on her through the canopy of the trees that surround them. The ending is a visual metaphor that shows how, even in their extensive moments of pain and tragedy, they realize that a common thread of hope always emerges: “As long as there is life, there is hope. And as long as there is hope, there is life.” A-hao, who was their “sun,” left them a bit too soon, but every sunset comes with the promise of a new dawn.

Read More: ‘A Sun’ Review

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Thu, Nov 07, 2019 page14

Movie review: a sun, chung mong-hong weaves an emotionally layered family drama where a series of unfortunate events bring years of repressed feelings and misgivings to a suffocating boy.

• By Han Cheung / Staff reporter

In the beginning of A Sun (陽光普照), driving instructor A-wen (Chen Yi-wen, 陳以文) argues with his wife Qin (Samantha Ko, 柯淑勤) about their delinquent son, who is about to be sent to a juvenile correction facility.

“I hope they lock him up until he gets old, lock him up until he dies,” A-wen exclaims.

Of course A-wen isn’t cold-blooded. The complex combination of emotions — anger, disappointment, grief, sadness, love — of a repressed man who avoids facing his feelings by pretending he doesn’t care is evident in that one line.

Wu Chien-ho, Samantha Ko, Chen Yi-wen and Greg Hsu play the featured family in A Sun .

Photo courtesy of atmovies.com

Qin provides the contrast. She’s the one facing the family issues directly, but she also remains mostly stoic and matter-of-fact, taking whatever life throws at the family even though she’s obviously exhausted.

This kind of family dynamic is fairly common in Taiwanese society. Although every family member deeply cares for each other, they shut each other out and even say hurtful things, often preferring to secretly “help” in ways that cause even more discord. A-wen’s character exemplifies this archetype — frail, crooked and wrinkled but unwilling to bend even a little bit.

The bulk of the action and dramatics revolves around the son A-he (Wu Chien-ho, 巫建和), who is as inept as his father at expressing himself, preferring to solve problems through violence. He frequently says “I’m fine,” when he’s clearly not. Wu also does a superb job with the troubled character’s development over the four years in which the film takes place, serving as a believable catalyst for the entire film’s events.

However, it is Chen and Ko’s subtle yet powerful performances that drive the suffocating tension that carries the two-and-a-half hour film and makes this ordinary story about ordinary people shine. It takes top-notch acting to make such a layered drama work, and the supporting actors such as Liu Kuan-ting (劉冠廷), who plays A-he’s old delinquent buddy and the movie’s “villain,” also hold their own.

This is the latest work by acclaimed director Chung Mong-hong (鍾孟宏), who won a Golden Horse for best director for the 2010 The Fourth Portrait (第四張畫), which is also about troubled youth. The cinematography is rich and vibrant, making masterful use of darkness and light, especially sunlight — whether soft or blinding — echoing the title of the film.

The sun, although warm and life-sustaining, can also burn. What if there are no more shadows to protect us from the burning sun? laments A-he’s handsome and successful elder brother A-hao (Greg Hsu, 許光漢). Although he doesn’t have a major role in the movie, he inadvertently becomes the “sun” that eats up the shadows and forces everything into the open.

No matter how loving a family is, very few can be completely open with each other, each harboring some deep and often dark secret. Sometimes it takes pain and misfortune to expose them, and the family either disintegrates or becomes closer through the process.

Even though the movie is 155-minutes long, there are parts that could have been elaborated on. For example, perhaps A-hao could have had a more prominent role, as his stark contrast to A-he as the family’s “golden boy,” and clearly the father’s favorite, would have made for some interesting development.

Although Qin plays the strong motherly role well, the story is still more about father-and-son as well as the ties between fellow delinquents and gangsters, namely male-to-male relationships. There are also some intriguing female bonds in the story, such as A-he’s young and pregnant girlfriend Xiaoyu (Wu Tai-ling, 吳岱凌) whom Qin takes under her wing, but this part is left largely unexplored.

But that’s just nitpicking. Chung handles the subtleties and complexities of humanity extremely well, and A Sun will probably win many awards come Golden Horse time and leave its mark among the masterpieces of Taiwanese cinema.

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A Sun review – a complex story of fathers and sons

An emotionally complex tale of a family told with skill and depth by Chung Mong-Hong, and a worthy addition to Netflix.

New on Netflix today after enjoying a fair amount of success elsewhere, Chung Mong-Hong’s A Sun (Netflix) is a complex and emotional story of family – of coming together and breaking apart, of unmet expectations and personal failures piling atop each other until the light is barely visible behind them. It isn’t a crowd-pleaser, necessarily, but it is a stark film that rings of truth, which can be a rare thing.

Wen (Chen Yi-Wen) is a father of two. His youngest son Ho (Wu Chien-Ho) is the black sheep of the family, a violent young man sent away to a juvenile detention center for assault; his oldest, Hao (Xu Guang-Han), is the go-getting overachiever with aspirations worth nurturing, even at the expense of others. After his incarceration, Ho’s girlfriend Xiao-Yu (Wu Dai-Ling) reveals she is carrying his child and is welcomed into the family by Qin (Samantha Ko), mother of Ho and Hao.

There is much more to this story that is worth discovering on your own. But A Sun is not particularly interested in the extremes of emotion; more so the muddled grey area where hidden bitterness, jealousy, and self-loathing are left to fester. It is interested, too, in the fronts we present in order to obscure how we really feel, and what happens when those fronts either slip or are allowed to become who we are – this new, dishonest simulacrum, so convincing that we allow ourselves to believe in it.

Any frequenter of social media will have seen those memes which caution someone against judging a person on how they look, sound, or act; their internal traumas and struggles exist beneath a finely-polished façade that can’t be penetrated at a glance. There is a need in all of us, and that need – to be noticed, to be loved, to be attended to – pulses beneath A Sun like a steady heartbeat. It is the pulse of Chung’s characters; the lifeblood of his dramatic setup. What if, the film asks, that need isn’t met until it’s too late?

Grounded and naturalistic in its depiction of family, grief, loss, regret, and growth, A Sun is a film of quiet emotional power and a cautionary tale of what can happen when you fail to consider the needs of others before your own. It’s a film about empathy and a reminder that language is not our first language – it’s what we don’t say, and how we listen when nobody else is speaking, that defines how we know someone. A Sun asks if we know anyone quite well enough.

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‘A Sun’ Summary & Analysis – It Takes Two To Make An Impermeable Umbrella

“ Unforeseen yet seldom fortuitous ” is a phrase that could be used to describe the array of events that take place in A Sun . This visually stunning Taiwanese film is written and directed by Mong-Hong Chung and has been co-written by Yaoshen Chang . It is originally titled Yangguang Puzhao .

Why the makers wanted to keep the title of this intense crime drama as “ A Sun “, could be explained through faceted perspectives. There are very few things in life that could be said to be fair and just in their entirety. There always exists that corrupt faction that lures the balance towards one side. There is a scene where Greg Han Hsu who plays A-Hao says that the sun is the fairest of all, as it shines equally on everybody. I think that the film uses it as a symbolic representation of the shield, often referred to as “ parents. ” Sometimes I sit and try to understand this basic and often taken-for-granted attribute that comes from being a parent. The logic fades and well the analytics is of no use. Human behavior and the scientific data backing it do not apply to the realm of parenthood. A parent is ready to go to any lengths when it comes to the well-being of their offsprings. They form an impermeable umbrella. They bear the heat so that the little one is nurtured in the shade.

Throughout the film, I was under the dilemma, who’s story is it finally going to become. I tried to make my own assumptions about where it is leading. Will it be about an underdog or the dark horse. Will it be about resilience or stubbornness. Will it be an extravagant story about serendipity or ill-fated doom. But to my surprise, it came out to be a story about the power of selflessness that we often underestimate. It became a story about sacrifice and a watchful protector who would be mocked instantly if told so in public, as the idea of a vigilante was completely inconsistent with the image it held.

Squall and Drenched

Generally, the story starts from a bud and then gently flowers, exhibiting all its colors, and captivating our attention. It takes us to a make-believe world. A successful film is capable of making a viewer associate with that world in ways that are multifold, even if he or she possesses a totally different set of sensibilities. In the film A Sun , this is not a gradual process. It takes you by shock. It shakes you from within and plays with your expectations. It plays with the defined pattern. It bamboozles you, deludes you, misleads you, and makes sure you can’t flinch even for a second. It’s like a Venus Flytrap. It opens its tentacle, frightening you, and then gradually closes it to form a canopy enclosing all the darkness.

Light and Darkness

A Sun plays with our perception. Our understanding of right and wrong. It establishes facts just to change them in the end. I realized how fickle human emotions could be. I realized how we are quick enough to judge, based on stereotypes. We don’t even wait for the game to play its course rather start making presumptions without understanding the nature of facts. It’s a human tendency that we as a species abstain from going beyond the surface. We want to gain the maximum benefits without taking the difficult job.

Chien-Ho Wu who plays A-Ho and A-Hao ( Greg Han Hsu ) his elder brother are a personification of this light and darkness. They themselves feel like that. One is the good son, on whom the parents hoard all their expectations and the other is the one who has lost faith in his own capabilities merely looking at the perceptions others hold for him. But to everybody’s amusement, it doesn’t turn out like that. The parents and even the boys themselves understand how inconsequential this subjectivity of the society can be, that forms its bias based on only what it understands.

A Resilient Figure that Held the Reins

It is so important for someone to hold their nerves in times of chaos. If there is any way that can lead us out of chaos, it is a calm mind that does not give up its prudence in times when everyone is overpowered by emotions.

I love how the director has chosen that figure to be Miss Qin ( Samantha Shu-Chin Ko), the mother. When A-Ho is jailed for committing an offense , or when she gets to know that his love interest is expecting a baby which belongs to him, or in any of the advertisements that the family had to face, she is capable of thinking what could be the best thing that could be done from thereon. She accepts the ill fate and tries to make things better by moving forward, rather than crying over what’s done. She is that pivot, that centerpiece that holds everything together.

A dark horse

The writer and the director not only play with the storyline and the general perceptions we have to create moments of thrill and surprise, but they make use of such staple character traits to break the stereotype and henceforth make a revelation that no one expected.

Of late much of the cinema has been suffering from the vice of generalization. Though as artists I expect them to be devoid of such sinful traits. But in the end, they are a part of this society only. Also, the majority is here to mint money rather than create a piece of art. A thoughtful creator evokes a sense of amazement by merely dwelling in the grey areas rather than quantifying everything as being black or white.

In this particular film, it is as if the director and writer duo mock our fixed pattern of thinking. I believe that’s where A Sun derives its major thrill and suspense from.

The film is a visual treat that would time and again make sure that you’re totally attentive. As soon as you start thinking that the film is moving in a particular direction it thwarts you and takes you to another unexplored alley. The film has its fair share of dingy and dark humor, in places, you would expect it the least. For some, it might be half n hour too long, but then the film does try to complete a full revolution. It’s trying to keep the starting and ending events on a scale and weigh the bigotry of our opinions.

Streaming on Netflix , A Sun is an entertaining ride with a lot of substance and is filled with those little spicules that prickle but in the end, make a far greater point.

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Movie Review: ‘The Garfield Movie’

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“Garfield and Friends,” based on comic strips by Jim Davis, was one of my favorite cartoons growing up. With all due respect to the show’s talented writers and other voice actors, the best thing about the show was Lorenzo Music’s performance as the title tabby.

Music’s voice, which somehow always sounded like a yawn, was the perfect fit for a character that spent every waking moment wishing he wasn’t awake. Yes, Garfield would engage in frenzied eating, especially of lasagna, but that was mostly handled with whooshing noises from the sound effects team. Otherwise, Garfield, with Music’s voice, was the personification (cat-ification?) of laziness.

I take this moment to applaud Music as Garfield because I have nothing but negative things to say about Chris Pratt as the character in “The Garfield Movie.” The guy just doesn’t have it in him to sound that lazy. It’s not like he doesn’t have experience playing lazy.

He was always something of a slacker as Star-Lord and his “Parks and Recreation” character spent most of the first season milking an injury. But here, he always sounds like he’s up for an adventure. The movie around him isn’t much of a winner anyway, but it’s already off on the wrong paw when Garfield doesn’t sound like Garfield.

The story opens with a glimpse into Garfield’s days as a kitten, when he was left in an alley by his father Vic (Samuel L. Jackson), and found his way to Jon (Nicholas Hoult), his doormat of an owner. The household soon adds loyal dog Odie (Harvey Guillen, limited to dog noises) and the pets live in sedentary luxury.

Of course, something has to happen to keep Garfield from enjoying complacency, and one night he finds himself cat-napped, as opposed to indulging in a cat nap. He and Odie are brought to a hideout where they meet the long-absent Vic. But Vic isn’t their captor, he’s very much on a short leash himself. Advertisement

The operation is actually headed by feline crime boss Jinx (Hannah Waddingham) and her hench-cats Roland (Brett Goldstein) and Nolan (Bowen Yang). She has a vendetta against Vic for abandoning her during a milk heist at a farm (sadly not Jim Davis’s “U.S. Acres,” though I would have loved that crossover) years earlier.

But Vic can repay his debt if he, Garfield, and Odie can pull off the same heist now, with the farm having stronger security. The three reluctantly take on the assignment, even though Garfield and Odie are pampered housepets and Garfield and Vic’s relationship is sorely strained.

The rest of the movie is an adventure-comedy that could be filled by characters from any franchise with a spoiled lead lacking in skills and street smarts. The only thing that makes it recognizable as “Garfield” is that Odie, to the movie’s credit, is as awesome as ever with his ingenuity and unwavering friendship.

A few physical gags work, and there are some scene-stealing moments from the villains and a bull voiced by Ving Rhames (I took twisted delight in the very idea of the Arby’s pitchman voicing future roast beef). But every time there’s a string of solid gags or decent action, the miscast Pratt will open his mouth and I’ll be reminded that this movie has a major flaw at a fundamental level.

“The Garfield Movie” is mostly middling, brought down by how much Pratt pales in comparison to Lorenzo Music. At least it has the decency to be wholly animated, as opposed to the Bill Murray movies where the environment was live-action and Garfield was a CGI abomination.

The new movie is never “that” painful, but it doesn’t strike me as anyone’s best work, either. I guess what I’m saying is that this movie, while it could have been worse, is lazy – and not in a way that’s on-brand for Garfield.

Grade: C- “The Garfield Movie” is rated PG for action/peril and mild thematic elements. Its running time is 101 minutes.

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‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’ Review: A Lonely Avenger

The fifth installment of George Miller’s series delivers an origin story of Furiosa, the hard-bitten driver played here by Anya Taylor-Joy.

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‘Furiosa’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The director george miller narrates a sequence from his film featuring anya taylor-joy and tom burke..

Hello, I’m George Miller, director of “Furiosa.” At this point in the movie, we’ve got Furiosa played by Anya Taylor-Joy and we’ve got Praetorian Jack played by Tom Burke arriving at Bullet Farm, where they’re meant to pick up all these munitions and weapons for this battle. However, when they get to the Bullet Farm, there’s something weird going on. When they see the dog with a foot in its mouth, they realize that that’s Dementus’s dog. And they know at that moment that Dementus has somehow taken over the Bullet Farm. She just gets out in time, and the other car that came in with them gets basically cut in half by this massive steel portcullis. And that shot was a very difficult shot to do. Anya had to do that 180 degree turn. The portcullis came down. But to pull the timing of her turn and the portcullis coming down and crushing the other car was very, very difficult to do. [GUNSHOT] So there’s a certain part of this sequence which has no music because the music would be redundant, so it’s not scored. The score only arises when it informs what’s happening between our two main characters. They have to respond in the moment like all Warriors do, and get out of this situation. And in the process we find them relinquishing their own self interest. One for the other. What follows is that through their actions, not their words and their promises to each other, but through their actions that they actually are prepared to give of themselves entirely to the other. [ENGINE RUMBLE] So in a way, it’s kind of a love story in the middle of an action scene. That’s always at the heart of every action sequence. It’s not all the kinetics and the sound of it. It’s all about an interaction of characters. It’s character driven and it’s the interplay between the characters that we’re most interested in.

By Manohla Dargis

Dystopia has rarely looked as grim and felt as exhilarating as it has in George Miller’s “Mad Max” cycle. For decades, Miller has been wowing viewers with hallucinatory images of a ravaged, violent world that looks enough like ours to generate shivers of recognition. Yet however familiar his alternative universe can seem — feel — his filmmaking creates such a strong contact high that it’s always been easy to simply bliss out on the sheer spectacle of it all. Apocalypse? Cool!

The thing is, it has started to feel less cool just because in the years since the original “Mad Max” opened in 1979, the distance between Miller’s scorched earth and ours has narrowed. Set “a few years from now,” the first film tracks Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), a highway patrol cop who has a semblance of a normal life with a wife and kid. That things are about to go to hell for Max is obvious in the opening shot of a sign for the Hall of Justice, an entry that evokes the gate at Auschwitz (“Work Sets You Free”). You may have flinched if you made that association, but whatever qualms you had were soon swept away by the ensuing chases and crashes, the gunning engines and mad laughter.

Miller’s latest and fifth movie in the cycle, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” is primarily an origin story that recounts the life and brutal, dehumanizing times of the young Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy), the hard-bitten rig driver played by Charlize Theron in the last film, “ Mad Max: Fury Road ” (2015). Miller’s magnum opus, “Fury Road” is at once the apotheosis of his cinematic genius — it’s one of the great movies of the last decade — and a departure narratively and tonally from the previous films. In “Fury,” Max still serves as the nominal headliner (with Tom Hardy taking over for Gibson), but the movie’s dramatic and emotional weight rests on Furiosa, her quest and her hopes.

As befits a creation story, “Furiosa” tracks Furiosa from childhood to young adulthood, a downward spiral that takes her from freedom to captivity and, in time, circumscribed sovereignty. It opens with the 10-year-old Furiosa (Alyla Browne) foraging in a forest close to a paradisiacal outpost called the Green Place of Many Mothers. Just as she’s reaching for an amusingly, metaphorically ripe peach, her idyll is cut short by a gang of snaggletooth, hygiene-challenged bikers. They’re soon rocketing across the desert with Furiosa tied up on one of their bikes, with her mother (Charlee Fraser) and another woman in pursuit on horseback, a chase that presages the fight for power and bodies which follows.

The chase grows exponentially tenser as Miller begins shifting between close-ups and expansive long shots, the raucous noise and energy of the kidnappers on their hell machines working contrapuntally against the desert’s stillness. While the scene’s arid landscape conjures up past “Mad Max” adventures, the buttes and the galloping horse evoke the classic westerns from which this series has drawn some of its mythopoetic force. Max has often seemed like a Hollywood gunslinger (or samurai) transplanted into Miller’s feverish imagination with some notes from Joseph Campbell. The minute Furiosa starts gnawing on her captor’s fuel line, though, Miller makes it clear that this wee captive is no damsel in distress.

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'Robot Dreams' an animated fable fit for kids, but adults will cherish it most

Wistful, wordless film set in the new york of the ‘80s expresses something profound without wasting a word..

A dog shows his new mechanical friend around 1980s New York City in “Robot Dreams.”

It’s one of those strange but immutable truths of the movies that a song like Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” can play in roughly a thousand films before a movie about a dog and a robot comes along and blows them all out of the water.

The animated “Robot Dreams” is wordless, so the songs play an outsized influence in conjuring its whimsical and gently existential tone. But the movie, a 1980s New York-set fable about loved ones who come and go, doesn’t just use “September” for a scene or even two. It’s the soundtrack to the friendship between Dog and Robot (yes, those are the protagonists’ names in this disarmingly simple film), and its melody returns in various forms whenever they’re reminded of each other.

To a remarkable degree, “Robot Dreams” has fully imbibed all the melancholy and joy of Earth, Wind & Fire’s disco classic. Just as the song asks “Do you remember?” so too does “Robot Dreams,” a sweetly wistful little movie that, like a good pop song, expresses something profound without wasting a word.

Remembering is also helpful when it comes to the film, itself. Its release comes more than a year after its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and months after “Robot Dreams” was Oscar nominated for best animated film . But for whatever reason, the film is only arriving in North American theaters this month.

It’s an unconventional release pattern for an unconventional film. “Robot Dreams,” adapted from Sara Varon’s 2007 graphic novel, is likewise an all-ages movie in a curious way. It’s very much for kids, but it’s also so mature in its depictions of relationships that older generations may swoon hardest for it.

“Robot Dreams” begins in the East Village where Dog lives a rather lonely life. Before he sits down to eat a microwave dinner, he notices his solitary reflection in the TV screen. An ad sparks Dog to order the Amica 2000. A few days later, a box arrives, Dog assembles its contents and soon a friendly robot is smiling back at him.

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Together, they have a grand old time around a New York colorfully rendered with pointillist detail. They jump the subway turnstiles, visit Woolworths and rollerblade in Central Park (with “September” playing on the boombox). But after an outing to Playland (which looks much more like Coney Island), Robot’s enthusiasm gets him into some trouble. After frolicking in the water, he lies down on the beach and later finds he can’t move. This may be a movie about a Dog who rollerblades and a Robot who eats hot dogs, but the scientific reality of rust is one suspense of disbelief too far for “Robot Dreams.”

Despite all of Dog’s efforts, Robot is stuck, and, this being September, the beach is soon closed for the off-season. Much of “Robot Dreams” passes through the seasons while Robot dreamily sleeps through the winter and Dog is forced to go on with his life, and maybe try to meet someone new.

The dreams of each can be surreal; Dog has a bowling alley visit with a snowman who bowls his own head, while Robot imagines a “Wizard of Oz”-like fantasy. But both are consumed by fears of their friend’s abandonment while progressively finding new experiences and friends. New characters enter, with their own New Yorks (kite-flying in the park, rooftop barbecues) and their own soundtracks. “Robot Dreams” movingly turns into a story about moving on while still cherishing the good times you once shared with someone — a valuable lesson to young and old, in friendship and romance.

And even this sense of memory runs deeper in “Robot Dreams” than you might be prepared for. Director Pablo Berger, the Spanish filmmaker whose movies include the 2012 black-and-white silent “Blancanieves,” has filled his movie with countless bits of a bygone past, from Atari to Tab soda. The name Amica 2000 could be a pun for the Amiga 500, the early computer and harbinger of our digital present.

Even more dramatic, though, is the way the Twin Towers often loom in the background in a film so connected to the month of September. There, too, is a poignant symbol of companions, friends and family members who vanished, but whose memories still stir within us.

This is, you might be thinking, a lot for a cartoon about a dog and a robot to evoke. And yet “Robot Dreams” does so, beautifully. And it will leave you curiously lifted by the spirit and lyrics of one of the most-played wedding songs of all time: “Only blue talk and love, remember/ The true love we share today.”

Review: Even Julia Louis-Dreyfus can’t make ‘Tuesday’ not feel like a Monday

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What comes after death is arguably the great unknown of humankind, making grief and the afterlife endless subjects for storytelling. How to visualize death, perhaps most famously realized in Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal,” has likewise long haunted filmmakers. In “Tuesday,” the feature debut from U.K.-based Croatian writer-director Daina O. Pusić, death becomes a macaw.

Yes, a macaw. As the bird goes about his work, waving a wing over those whose time is up, it changes size, growing to larger than human scale or shrinking to hide in a young woman’s ear. Also it can communicate with people. There is something both unnerving and a bit silly about the idea — the creature is voiced and performed by actor Arinzé Kene, augmented by CGI — and the film places an unbalanced amount of attention on the bird. If it is meant to be the big innovation and motivating element of the rest of the film, it simply does not hold up.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus would like to talk about death

In her new movie, “Tuesday,” and on her “Wiser Than Me” podcast, Julia Louis-Dreyfus goes deep on a subject we all must confront — how things end.

June 7, 2024

This means that the film’s human story, where its interests should more properly lie, winds up feeling shortchanged in the face of so much focus on the macabre macaw of death. Zora ( Julia Louis-Dreyfus ), an American woman living in London, is struggling to come to terms with the imminent death of her daughter, Tuesday (Lola Petticrew), who has a terminal illness.

Pusić isn’t much interested in the details of the backstory or how these characters ended up in these circumstances, which works both to the film’s benefit, keeping it very focused on the moment, and also to its harm, with too many distracting, dangling questions about the bigger picture. The movie feels like an adaptation of a short story that has been pushed to the edges of its literary map, struggling to expand beyond.

Much of what does work in the film revolves around the performance of Louis-Dreyfus. She has long been a master of a certain kind of aggrieved resignation, the feeling that the forces of the world are somehow conspiring to make her day worse. In her work with writer-director Nicole Holofcener in “Enough Said” and “You Hurt My Feelings,” she found a more dramatic register, albeit one still rooted in comedy. Here, the allegorical absurdity of the situation draws upon her comedic reserves, in contrast to the seriousness of a woman in denial about her daughter’s impending death. Louis-Dreyfus fluidly blends the conflicting emotions together.

With “Tuesday,” Pusić shows great promise as a visual storyteller and director of performers. Yet it is in her work as a screenwriter where the film falters. Without the power and nuance that Louis-Dreyfus brings to the role, the drama would not have nearly as much spine or impact as it does. There still isn’t much need to make a date with this “Tuesday,” more an oddity than a revelation.

'Tuesday'

Rating: R, for language Running time: 1 hour, 51 minutes Playing: In wide release Friday, June 14

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Mark Olsen writes about all kinds of movies for the Los Angeles Times as both a feature writer and reviewer.

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