Saw A City of Sadness. I did not understand it. It followed four brothers living in Taiwan during the tumultuous period after WW2. Japan has surrendered the island to China but the people are restless and want independance. This is my understanding anyway. I don't know the history of Taiwan and according to a quick scan of wikipedia, discussion of this period was (is?) actively suppressed. At any rate in this film there's much upheaval.
The four brothers are used to explore different parts of the Taiwanese subjugation. One gets involved in organized crime, the other remains a small businessman. One brother is deaf and a photographer. This is a clever concept and suggests great depths that I'm not seeing here. As a photographer, he understands the importance of images - what is included in frame and off. In this film we often cut away just before the final gunshot or before the confrontation turns ugly. Sometimes we jump to one of the brothers being brought to a hospital but other times we cut to the rest of the family peacefully eating. The lack of definite answers forces us to guess and infer the proceedings which is very true to what I imagine a post-war chaos would feel like. It is frustrating however and makes the film feel unfinished or censored to me.
I did not understand it however since it deals intimately with a time and place I know nothing about. The symbolic cleverness of the photographer and the excellent visuals lead me to believe that this is a serious, well-thought-out film but lacking even a cursory understanding of the period its commenting on, I'm left sort of in the dark. An interesting film nonetheless.
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