Rain Man (1988/MGM Blu-ray) + Yi Yi (aka A One & A Two…/2000/Criterion Collection Blu-ray)

 

Picture: B-/B     Sound: B-     Extras: B     Films: B+/B

 

 

Some films achieve a sense of pure cinema in their feel, flow, taking us somewhere we have not been before and showing us things we have not seen before, or show us familiar things in a new light.  Though they may seem different at first, two one-of-a-kind films arriving on Blu-ray at about the same time manage to pull this off.

 

First is Barry Levinson’s best film, Rain Man (1988), the film that showed us exactly what being an autistic savant was in a classic performance by the great Dustin Hoffman.  Originally, this was almost a TV movie, a Steven Spielberg film and Bill Murray was in the running for a lead role.  Instead, the project became one of the rare hits (and only blockbuster hits) for MGM/UA in the lean-for-them 1980s and took home four Academy Awards.

 

Tom Cruise is a slick salesman of expensive superexoticars who thinks he has his whole life together and hates his father; a situation he must face when his father passes away.  At the reading of the will, he expects to get the family fortune, but discovers the vast majority of it has been left to an unknown person who turns out to be a brother he never knew he had (Hoffman).  With his beautiful girlfriend (the underrated Valerie Golino) in tow, they go to find out the who and discover the truth.  This leads to one of the greatest road trips in cinema history as Charlie Babbitt (Cruise) has to decide whether he can get the money by taking care of a brother he cannot understand, communicate with and be the custodian of

 

The Ronald Bass/Barry Murrow screenplay is a gem and everything in this film works all the time.  A huge success and sensation when it came out, the film is still discussed, but not as much as I like it to be now and as the subject of autism is in the mainstream more and more, it is a fine work that holds up extraordinarily well.  Yes, it can be haunted by Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy or Scarecrow, but it is still its own film and a film of the kind we rarely see anywhere anymore.

 

Extras include three feature length audio commentary tracks (one by Levinson, one by Murrow and one by Bass), a Deleted Scene, the Original theatrical Trailer and two featurettes: The Journey of RAIN MAN and Lifting The Fog: A Look At The Mysteries Of Autism.

 

 

Less seen and less distributed, yet often as remarkable in its own way, Edward Yang’s Yi Yi (2000) is an amazing film from a very brief period on Taiwan history that they actually had their own cinema that was not imported Chinese product trying to assimilate them into the larger country after WWII (when the Japanese lost the land to them losing in the war) or any other import product like Hollywood fare.

 

Instead, we get a year in the life of a middle-class Taipei family dealing with the future, marriage and death in their midst and the actual result is a character study of the country and its people.  At first, it seems like any other melodrama or comedy you might have seen before, but between the interactions and attitudes of the people, the locations and the feel of the film, it is a unique experience and a cinematic one, showing us a country that managed to rebuild after WWII and getting a somewhat less interested China taking over (the Japanese built everything up before WWII and were proactive in taking care of the country, but more building followed and many of the business district buildings are from the 1960s still hanging in there!) and has managed to find its own quiet niche.

 

This is in Mandarin, but does not feel like Chinese or Japanese cinema in the least.  I liked the film, though it is long at 173 minutes and the cast is good.  Yang has passed away and did a few films before his passing.  After this, I hope to see more of them.

 

Extras include a feature length audio commentary track by Yang and Asian film scholar Tony Rayns, U.S. theatrical trailer that is low def, original English subtitle translations by Yang & Rayns and a great video interview with Rayns about the New Taiwan Cinema movement, plus Criterion includes yet another one of their informative booklets with tech information, notes from Yang on the film and an essay by Kent Jones about Yang.

 

 

The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image on the Blu-rays look good, though Rain Man (AVC @ 32 MBPS) could look better and comes from what looks like an older HD master.  Having seen the film in 35mm many times, though this can look good, it does not do total justice to the amazing work and look created by John Seale, A.C.S. and the look is part of the experience of seeing the film.  Yi Yi is a 4K transfer from a 35mm internegative with only minor flaws throughout, doing justice to Weihan Yang’s impressive cinematography.

 

Both also offer DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) mixes, Rain Man is a 5.1 mix off of the old, advanced, Dolby SR (Spectral Recording) analog master that is a bit weak, while the 2.0 Stereo mix on Yi Yi has Pro Logic surrounds and despite being a Dolby Digital theatrical release, apparently was not a true 5.1 film coming from a two track magnetic master with such built in surrounds.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo