A SUN: FILM REVIEW
Chung Mong-Hong’s two-and-half hour long Taiwanese drama, A Sun, is nothing short of a heart wrenching, yet decidedly hopeful, epic. I, like many others, completely missed this hidden gem and only happened to stumble upon the film when Netflix placed it upon on my home page. For once, its AI gave me a recommendation that I actually liked.
A Sun opens with one of its most morbid scenes, but the viewer is left in the dark about the violence to come. Light-hearted, classical music plays while two teenage men by the names of A-Ho (Wu Chien-Ho) and Radish (Liu Kuan-Tin), shuffle through the streets of Taiwan. They weave their way through the back of a busy restaurant and arrive at a roundtable where a group of people are sitting and eating. In a blink of an eye, Radish brutally uses a machete to slice the hand off a man named Oden (Chang Li-Tung), who is sitting at the table. His hand falls into the soup. Blood splatters everywhere, and A-Ho and Radish flee the scene. The rest of A Sun depicts the events that occur after this crime and the shifting relationships between A-Ho and his family.
A-Ho is seen as the family’s troubled black sheep, while his brother, A-Hao (Xu Guang-Han), is the golden child — he is kind, selfless, and on track to become a doctor. Although A-Ho is victim to making reactive and stupid mistakes, he is not a bad person. His mischievous character is largely constructed by the jealousy he feels towards his seemingly perfect older brother and his distant relationship with his father, A-Wen (Chen Yi-Wen), who is a driving instructor. A-Wen is a prideful man who acts on principles and will do anything to preserve that. When colleagues ask A-Wen how many children he has, he says one. His coldness and lack of remorse for A-Ho is painful to watch. During A-Ho’s hearing, it is A-wen who persuades the judge to send A-Ho to juvenile detention, eliciting a furious response from his wife, Qin (Samantha Ko). Qin, although a serene and compassionate character, is difficult to read.
A Sun’s greatest feat is its ability to capture the A-Ho family’s complicated dynamics as they endure inexplicable grief and learn how to love again. Displays of emotion are not stark throughout the film, as each family member tries to hide their suffering. However, their pain can still be felt and, in fact, is quite obvious. People are usually not as secretive as they think. The tremble in Qin’s voice as she recalls a memory of A-Ho riding on her bike when he was young and a look into her lifeless eyes reveals all.
While each member of A-Ho’s family is extremely different, they all share a refusal to be honest with themselves. When A-Hao pays a good-natured visit to A-Ho in juvenile detention, A-Ho treats his older brother with the same iciness that he gets from his father. A-Hao is deemed to be the ultimate savior of the family. As the title of the film suggests, he is their sun. However, it soon becomes clear that A-Hao is not perfect either. He, like the rest of his family, masks his own pain and suffering. The only difference is that he is good at it — so good, that it’s scary. On the contrary, it appears that A-Wen fails at hiding his emotions, as he publicly displays disappointment towards his son. However, A-Wen actually deeply loves his family, but just doesn’t know what to do with it.
A Sun is a brutally honest film that shows how far we will go to not only deceive others, but also ourselves. Its characters are perfectly complex, as each reflects both dark and empathetic sides of ourselves. The film poses the question, how does a family recover from the horrors that life often presents? Can a family even recover? By the end, I don’t think A-Ho’s family does. But they do find ways to heal and to soak in the sun again, even through the most painful of tragedies.