A City of Sadness 1989

From 1945 to 1949, in a coastal town near Taipei, Taiwan, the Lin family endures a turbulent era that follows the end of fifty years of Japanese colonial rule and precedes the establishment of a Kuomintang government-in-exile in Taiwan after the mainland falls under Communist control. The film opens on August 15, 1945, when Emperor Hirohito’s voice proclaims Japan’s unconditional surrender, and the people celebrate a sense of regained sovereignty. A flood of newcomers from the mainland—Kuomintang troops, gangsters, and left-leaning thinkers—arrives, reshaping the town’s social fabric and igniting new tensions beneath a fragile peace.

The eldest son, Wen Leung [Jack Kao], runs a bar called “Little Shanghai” and stands as the family’s pillar in a changing world. He shoulders the responsibility of guiding his siblings through a landscape scarred by war and occupation. The second son, a military doctor, had served during the war but vanished in the Philippines, a mystery that casts a shadow over the family. The youngest, Wen-ching [Tony Leung], is a photographer with leftist leanings who, despite a childhood accident that left him deaf, remains deeply engaged with the era’s political currents and his close friends Hiroe and Hiromi, whose shared ideals pull him toward larger causes.

The third son, Lin Wen-liang, once worked as an interpreter in Shanghai for the Japanese, a past that haunts him after Japan’s defeat when he is arrested by the Kuomintang on treason charges. His release from hospitalization—he had been kept under care as his mental state fluctuates—does not restore his quiet life. Instead, he slips into illegal schemes: stealing Japanese currency and collaborating with a smuggling operation run by Shanghainese associates. Wen Leung learns of these acts and tries to rein him in, but the tangled web of loyalties and revenge entangles the family in a dangerous struggle. The Shanghainese mob responds to Wen-liang’s actions with brutal expediency, arranging for his imprisonment on false charges of collaboration with the Japanese, and Wen-liang is subjected to torture that leaves lasting brain damage.

Amid these scalding tensions, the country’s political storm grows louder. The February 28 Incident of 1947 erupts, and thousands of Taiwanese civilians are massacred by Kuomintang troops. News travels by radio as Chen Yi, then chief administrator of Taiwan, declares martial law to quell dissent. The neighborhood clinic becomes a lifeline for the wounded, while Wen-ching faces his own brushes with danger: he is arrested at one point but eventually released. Hiroe flees to the mountains to join leftist guerrillas, and Wen-ching—though tempted by the idea of joining—ends up marrying Hiromi after Hiroe persuades him to return home and build a life with her.

Tragedy intensifies when Wen Leung’s gamble at a casino ends in a fatal confrontation with a Shanghainese mob member, who shoots him, leaving the family to mourn at his funeral. In the wake of this loss, Wen-ching and Hiromi marry, and Hiromi eventually bears a child. The couple continues to support Hiroe’s resistance network, but the guerrilla forces are ultimately defeated and executed. They manage to relay the grim news to Wen-ching and urge him to escape, yet Hiromi later reveals that they had nowhere to go. With the crackdown tightening, Wen-ching is arrested by the Kuomintang, leaving Hiromi and their child to face an uncertain future in a landscape torn by political upheaval and personal loss.

The film traces a poignant arc of family loyalty, sacrifice, and survival as the Lin family navigates love, betrayal, and the pull of political conviction against a backdrop of national upheaval. It grounds intimate human moments—bar challenges, personal sacrifice, quiet resilience—in the broader tides of history, offering a nuanced portrait of a community grappling with identity, memory, and the cost of standing by one another in a time of upheaval.

Wen Leung [Jack Kao], Wen-ching [Tony Leung], Mr. Wu, and Wu’s Mother appear as the central threads woven through this story of a family in a moment of national crisis. The narrative remains grounded in the emotional textures of its characters—their hopes, losses, and the quiet rhythms of life—while never losing sight of the historical forces that push them toward choices that shape the decades to come.