The Terroriser (Film)

Kongbu fenzi  aka The Terrorizers. 1986. Dir: Edward Yang. Scr: Yang, Xiao Ye.


Context:
Bears some resemblance to various art-works of Western Modernisn, both literary (e.g. André Gide's The Counterfeiters, even perhaps in Yang's choice of English title) and cinematic (Antonioni's Blow-Up), showcasing how Yang's work stands apart from more nativist Taiwanese/Chinese films: he assimilates Western influences more directly. Here it is useful to remember Jameson's point that in 'Third World' countries, modernity and post-modernity both arrived almost simultaneously (and late), from external sources.

"After this film, the New Cinema as a collective began to dissolve quickly. Evidence of the dissolution was a manifesto issued in 1987 by more than fifty film workers (including Yang himself) demanding more support from the government, producers, and distributors. In retrospect, The Terrorizers is the twilight of the New Cinema; it was also the last film Yang made in the commercial sector. After that, he became a true independent, sourcing talent and technicians through his own local network, and that of his executive producer Yu Weiyan"


The Film:
The film is very playful with notions of the interlinking between art and life, and with modernist concepts (life imitates art), perhaps drawing comparison to some of Kiarostami's characteristics (although he does these same things in a very different way, with very different concerns, and is probably less 'showy').


Different media all play a part in the film, as if themselves competing with the medium of film: photography, television, literature and even one could say the telephone all play major roles.
Yang described it as being about the everyday emotional 'ticking bombs' we set off in each other.

Fredric Jameson argues its intersecting narrative constructs a peculiarly urban context epitomizing postmodern space, a series of boxlike packages that contain, separate, and isolate inhabitants. (Note loose but interesting connection to later films, e.g. Haneke's Code Unknown.)

"The pleasure of the film comes in recognizing the intersections between different subplots, relationships, and genres. Negotiating the links between them makes the film an engrossing, satisfying experience, like the Sunday crossword"

Fukan: Fukan (literary supplements) are a unique Chinese journalistic tradition. The wife gives up her regular job to devote herself full-time to writing stories for the fukan fiction contest. No locally informed contemporary viewer of the film could possibly miss the subtle sarcasm directed at the dominant role played by the fukan institution in Taiwan's cultural life in the 1970s and 1980s. [Island on the Edge, 17]

Reception:
The film was, to Yang's surprise, a box-office hit.

"The Terrorizer's modernistic theme inevitably invoked a sense of deja vu among Western critics, well-represented by Fredric Jameson, who applies phrases like 'now-archaic modernity', 'old-fashioned reflexivity' and 'residual modernism' to the film" [Island on the Edge, 16]

Peggy Chiao lauded the film as the first Taiwan film to explore the nature of film or film-making. Zhan Hongzhi praised Yang's use of 'international film language'. "In short these local critics essentially concurred with Jameson in seeing The Terrorizer as a product of 'belated' or 'derivative' modernism, a view that finds justification in a Eurocentric genealogy of 'modernism'."  [Island on the Edge, 16]

"Unless you are a regular habitué of the NFT or a particularly assiduous patron of the London Film Festival, you could easily be forgiven for never having heard of Taiwan's New Wave" [Derek Elley, Films and Filming, Feb 1989... also reference to Blow-Up]



References:
http://worldcinemadirectory.co.uk/component/film/?id=1177 
Jameson in New Chinese Cinemas, 117-.