A Time to Live, a Time to Die

Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien

1985 / 138min / 35mm

Arguably the film in which all the elements of Hou’s meticulously controlled, objectively distanced mature style identifiably coalesce, and his first collaboration with crucial cohort Lee, the deeply personal coming-of-age story A Time to Live, a Time to Die—which Hou periodically narrates himself—draws on his family’s experience of relocating to rural Taiwan from mainland China in the late ’40s, following the character of immigrant Ah-hsiao through some 20 years that encompass childhood self-discovery, adolescent rebellion, and the eventual compromises, regrets, and compensations of adulthood. “Working in long takes and wide-screen, deep-focus compositions that frame the characters from a discreet distance, Hou allows the locations to seep into our own memories and experience, so that… we come to know them almost as intimately as touchstones in our own lives.” —Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

Introduction by programmer Edo Choi on Sunday, December 21st

Part of The Memory Palace