DUST IN THE WIND  (1987)  ****

Reviewed 10/22/99

The Hou Hsiao-hsien retrospective at New York's Walter Reade theater is doubtlessly one of 1999's movie-going highlights. The Taiwanese Hou is perhaps the greatest director of the past two decades, yet because of the state of foreign film distribution in the United States, none of his films have received commercial release here. Instead, we cinephiles have been left to discover his extraordinary works at museums and festivals. I had seen about half of his repertoire before this retro, but it was still revelatory.

In Hou's work, one can visibly trace his cinematic influences, and in turn, he has influenced many others. Hou has a style somewhere between Michelangelo Antonioni and Yasujiro Ozu enhanced by Hou's own striking sense of camera placement and framing. His mostly provincial subject matter would also do Italian Neorealists such as Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini proud. Like De Sica in his earlier films, Hou uses mostly nonprofessional actors. Some of Hou's most verbal supporters include directors Olivier Assayas and Kore-eda Hirokazu, both of whom have shot documentaries on him. To be more like his Chinese filmmaking idols, Hou and Edward Yang, Hirokazu now inverts his name so that his surname appears first in credits, which is contrary to Japanese convention. Along with Hirokazu's beautiful Maborosi, Tsai Ming-liang's Rebels of a Neon God and Bruno Dumont's La vie de Jesus are particularly obvious descendents of Hou's work.

Hou's style has progressed over the years, becoming more formal and minimalistic. While this development can be seen throughout the course of his films, he made a large leap in this direction in The Puppetmaster. It's zenith so far is Hou's latest work, The Flowers of Shanghai. I personally prefer Hou's earlier works like The Time to Live and the Time to Die and Dust in the Wind. While Hou's early films are less intellectually ambitious, their more autobiographical nature and less rigid form make for much more affecting films.

Given American ideology's emphasis on individuality, this country's filmmakers put the camera's focus on the character above all else. Hou, however, with his careful framing, long takes and long shots accentuates space and environment while depicting character. This greater sense of place shows how characters are inextricably bound to their surroundings which contribute as much to who and what they are as their own actions. In Dust in the Wind, for example, in one take, long shot with no camera movement, Hou shows us some old men sitting on the front steps of a house during a sudden electrical black out. A loud bang comes from within the house puzzling the men. The wife of the house hysterically enters frame left and rushes up the steps inside. We hear her talking to old Grandpa, who appears in the doorway cursing about how he mistook a firecracker for a candle. Not only is this funny, but it feels more real as Hou keeps us detached in our role of observer yet involved in caring for what happens to these people.

Dust in the Wind is about Wan and his girlfriend, Huen, who quit their jobs in their small mining town of Jio-fen and move to Taipei to find work. Wan becomes a delivery boy while Huen assists a seamstress. Wan is a little too proud for his own good, but is earnest in taking care of the introverted Huen. He can barely take care of himself however. Hou makes an apparent reference to De Sica's Bicycle Thief when Wan finds his motorcycle stolen. His resulting depression leads him to wander in the rain, getting him a case of bronchitis. Then he finds himself drafted by the army.

Hou collaborated with Chu T'ien-wen, who has written or co-written all of Hou's films, to give Dust in the Wind marvelously vivid details. Upon first moving to Taipei, Huen asks Wan what he thinks about various shoes in a store. After selecting a pair they both like, Wan finds that Huen is not asking for herself but for her family. She pulls out pieces of paper with the outlines of her family's feet traced on them so she can buy them the right size shoes. Dust in the Wind is filled with these little vignettes revealing the struggles as well as the savored moments of everyday life in Taiwan. The film never romanticizes or sentimentalizes though it is filled with beauty, even of the ugly sort. Many images -- the characters marching up to their hillside home next to a mountain cast in the shadows of passing clouds, a Buddhist ritual in front of a raging ocean, soldiers silhouetted against an overcast sky -- are breathtaking. Dust in the Wind, being more diffuse and directionless than its predecessor The Time to Live and the Time to Die, ultimately doesn't equal that film's impact. It is nevertheless, one of the best films of the 1980s.

Hou's films have only now finally found video distribution in the U.S., but they will have none of their impact on the big screen. The travesty is that most will never have the opportunity to view them as they should be seen. This Lincoln Center retrospective helps to correct that a little bit.