City of Sadness

Capsule by Jonathan Rosenbaum
From the Chicago Reader

A remarkable and beautiful 160-minute family saga (1989) by the great Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien (A Time to Live and a Time to Die, The Puppet Master) that begins at the end of Japan's 51-year colonial rule in Taiwan and ends in 1949, when mainland China becomes communist and Chiang Kai-shek's government retreats to Taipei. Perceiving these historical upheavals through the varied lives of a single family, Hou again proves himself a master of long takes and complex framing, with a great talent for passionate (though elliptical and distanced) storytelling. Given the diverse languages and dialects spoken here (including the language of a deaf-mute, rendered in intertitles), this is largely a meditation on communication itself. It is also one of the supreme masterworks of the contemporary cinema.