A Brighter Summer Day - Are You Lonesome Tonight?

(The long rambling essay I wrote on the film can be found here: https://boxd.it/KIAPr)

During the countless hours of visiting and revisiting Edward Yang's classic epic A Brighter Summer Day, and listening to the Elvis track which lent the film its title, I have often felt a subliminal connection between the lyrics of Are You Lonesome Tonight? and the events of the film. It would seem to me as if Yang's selection of this track to serve as the film's centerpiece wasn't merely a coincidence, but that the lyrics somehow told the story of protagonists Xiao Si'r and Ming, even if somewhat on an abstract level.

Try as I might, I couldn't quite express this fleeting connection in writing and so I set out to do the necessary: make a video experiment with clips from the film playing along to the music, directly presenting my observations instead of merely describing them. In this video, I've tried my best to find literal analogies between the lyrics and their corresponding images, trying to create a coherent visual representation of the music track through Xiao Si'r and Ming's shared fate, while also maintaining an editing rhythm that respects Yang's moody long-take aesthetic.

Every frame has been placed deliberately and I'd encourage anyone watching the video to read as much as they can into the audio-visual parallels, hopefully sharing my own sense of wonderment in the process.

P.S.- This is literally the first time in my life that I've attempted any kind of video editing, and thus it was quite a challenge. As such, please pardon any flaws or shortcomings that may have resulted from technical incompetence. Feedback is always welcome.