A City of Sadness

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A City of Sadness
DVD cover
Directed by	Hou Hsiao-hsien
Written by	T'ien-wen Chu Nien-Jen Wu
Starring	Tony Leung Chiu Wai
Distributed by	Artificial Eye (UK VHS)
Release date(s)	1989
Running time	157 min.
Country	Hong Kong/Taiwan
Language	Mandarin
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

A City of Sadness (Chinese: 悲情城市; pinyin: bēiqíng chéngshì) is a 1989 Taiwanese historical drama film by Hou Hsiao-hsien. It tells the story of a family embroiled in the tragic "White Terror" that was wrought on the Taiwanese people by the Kuomintang government (KMT) after their arrival from mainland China in the late 1940s, during which thousands of Taiwanese were rounded up, shot, and/or sent to prison. The film was the first deal openly with the KMT's authoritarian misdeeds after its 1945 takeover of Taiwan from Japan, and the first to depict the 228 Incident of 1947, in which thousands of people were massacred.

[edit] Plot

The film depicts one family's experiences during the White Terror. The eldest brother is murdered by a Shanghai mafia boss, one of the middle brothers is driven insane in a KMT jailhouse, and the youngest brother Lin Wen-Ch'ing (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) is a mute who wants to flee to the mountains with his friends to fight in the anti-KMT resistance movement. By the end of the film only the youngest brother, the photographer Wen-Ch'ing, is alive to tell, in writing, the story of his family's destruction.