Yi Yi · reception & legacy
2000 · Edward Yang
How Yi Yi has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Won Yang Best Director at Cannes in 2000 and was acclaimed from day one, but its stature has only grown — topping best-of-the-2000s critics' lists and landing in the top ten of the BBC's 2016 poll of the century's greatest films. It's now routinely called the definitive film of the 21st century's first year.
What's debated
The perennial cinephile debate isn't whether Yang made a masterpiece but which one — Yi Yi or A Brighter Summer Day — plus the eternal 'is three hours of quiet family life worth it?' onboarding argument (the answer from converts is always yes).
Its footprint
Yang-Yang's photographs of the backs of people's heads — 'you can't see it yourself, so I'm helping you' — have become one of cinephilia's most beloved images, and his line about wanting to 'tell people things they don't know, show them things they haven't seen' is endlessly quoted as a mission statement for movies themselves.
Where it stands
A Letterboxd top-250 fixture and a 'you must see this before you die' rite of passage — the gentle giant of the canon that people recommend like a life event rather than a film.