Context:
- Biographical element: The film is an autobiographical take on the youth of Wu Nien-jen, the co-writer of the film, who also wrote many other scripts for Hou (and for Yang) and would be a director and actor himself.
- Produced under CMPC: It was the last film Hou made under the CMPC studio, and thus marks a transition, which many have observed to be from his 'autobiographical' films to his 'historical' ones.
- During this period Hou's style came under a certain amount of criticism for being ascetic and commercial. He was even referred to by some as 'box office poison'. The debate, focusing on questions of accountability to both public and industry, was so tense that Hou wanted to make Dust in the Wind a commercially viable film. In addition, Chu Tien-wen published the screenplay and shooting script of Dust in the Wind with a string of short essays explaining Hou’s aesthetic choices. Though Chu hoped to mollify anti-Hou critics, her efforts did not pay off because the film itself did not fulfill Hou’s promises. On the contrary, Dust in the Wind augments Hou’s trademark asceticism.
The Film:
Clip from Beautiful Duckling: When Wan and Huen return back home, they attend an outdoor cinema screening, the like of which had been referred to in the first part of the film when we saw preparations for one. The film being shown is the 1965 'healthy realist' classic Beautiful Duckling directed by Li Xing. This 'citation' is partly a tribute from Hou (and the writers) to the kind of Taiwanese films that were a staple of his youth, but it also undercuts Li's film, which under the government's dictates shows plentiful harvests and happy farmers, by showing how inadequate its cinematic representation of the same 1960s era was. [In the interview with Burdeau, Hou remarks that he saw and loved this film as a youth. This cinematic 'quote' may be compared with those in The Boys from Fengkuei, while earlier in this film there is a scene shown in the city cinema of a martial arts film (cited in Island on the Edge as being The Ammunition Hunters, 1971) being played.] The scene after Wan has his bike stolen clearly recalls Bicycle Thieves, another reference to Italian neo-realism/post-neorealism to go with the clip of Rocco and His Brothers in Boys From Fengkuei.Train travelling shots: The POV-train scenes (one at the very start and another one later on) are memorable for many reasons. The train entering a tunnel gives an alternation of light and dark, a visual rhythm of cinema. The scenes also show off the greenery of Taiwan's rural regions. They also form part of the film's overall rhythm, as one of the quieter contemplative moments. They also provide a visual rhyme with later tunnel shots in the mine (the flashback/dream scene) and even perhaps the military base scenes (the tunnel-like enclosure where soldiers receive mail, and seat the shipwrecked family). Aurally, the scene also provides the repetitive rhythm of the train's sound running along the tracks.
Rhythm: Hou in this film displays a heightened interest in rhythm, as formal device and as theme, which he would later develop even more especially in Goodbye South, Goodbye and Millenium Mambo. The opening travelling shot from the train alternating between light and dark (in tunnels), mentioned above, is one of many examples. Journeys back and forth from city to countryside also form another of the film's rhythms. (There are other instances of sudden darkness in the film like the power-cut during the outdoor screening at the village, or the light going out while Wan is writing a letter to his sister.) On a thematic level, rhythm has to do with routine as in the mechanised menial jobs both Wan and Huen are stuck with in Taipei.
Triggered memory/dream-flashback scene: After a series of setbacks, the protagonist has been caught in the rain and receives shelter in a military base. Wan sits with a bowl of noodles, shivering, staring at a black-and-white television screen. There is a news program about mining, and as he focuses on the screen Hou cuts to a close-up of the TV. The flickering image depicts a tracking shot, sliding through the tunnels of the mine and the cramped conditions of the coalface. The forward motion on television suddenly gives way to a reverse tracking shot inside the dark mine. This is a visual rhyme with the many railroad tunnels that connect Wu’s mountain village with the world outside. Apparently, Hou has cut “inside” the TV to the actual scene of the accident. Inside the carriage, injured workers are being pulled back up to the surface. As they reach the top the sky opens up. The sudden flash of light makes them squint. Then a reverse-angle cut to figures, faces, the wife and children anxiously running into the mouth of the shaft to see if father has survived. These are the figures of the mother, Wuan, and his sister from about a decade before. We realize we are inside Wuan’s mind, having flashed back to a memory of his father surviving one of the periodic explosions deep inside the mine. Hou has taken us inside Wu’s memory using the small screen as a transition.
While it clearly recalls the memory-flashback triggered by guilt during a screening of Rocco and his Brothers in Boys From Fengkuei, this scene is different and perhaps unique in Hou's oeuvre, for its fever-dream quality. The images appear in a subjective fast-cut montage of barely perceptible images, including a priest chanting, and the grandfather (Li Tianlu) telling the story of how his grandson was named.
Technical development: Hou and Lee used the Arri III camera for the first tine instead of the Arri II, allowing greater sensitivity to light and ability to focus [Udden 77].
Reception:
Wu Nien-jen's own thoughts/Hou's cinema of 'restraint': In the story of Wu Nien-jen, the writer wanted a more straightforward display of emotions—joy, agony, grief, and anger. This is particularly apposite, at least to Wu, for a life of struggle, the rites of passage balancing exploitative work, illness, military service, and a failed romance— all in the absence of supportive family. This is very dramatic material, and Wu wanted his project realized with strong commercial appeal. The script’s working title was “Romantic city of the wind,” possibly a reference to the windy climate of Jiufen, Wu’s home district. It’s also crucial that Wu’s background is working class, coming from a poverty-stricken miner’s family up in the hills, cut off from bourgeois comforts. But Hou mostly suppresses these privations and emotional discharges because he regarded them as contrived expressions, as excess, not in accordance with the natural path of life, seeing the past as memory-sediments, as flashbacks from a distance.
References/Resources:
http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=13007&p=480767&#p480756
http://www.academia.edu/1595928/_Intimate_Temporalities_Affective_Historiologies_in_Hou_Hsiao-hsien_s_Dust_in_the_Wind._Asian_Cinema._23.1_2012.1_214-25
http://aino.blog.com/2010/02/07/the-introduction-of-taiwan-new-cinema/
Haden Guest -- 'Dust in the Wind and the Rhythms of the TNC' (Island on the Edge)
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