Film

A City of Sadness

  • Drama
  • Very dark
  • Slow-burning

Hou Hsiao-hsien's landmark 1989 film traces a Taipei family fractured by the White Terror, Taiwan's decades of KMT political repression. Visually restrained and emotionally patient, it builds its tragedy through quiet moments and silences. Essential viewing for anyone serious about cinema, and a window into modern Taiwan's buried trauma.

TMDb rating3.8

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are drawn to slow, observant films where a nation's violent history arrives through glances, ordinary meals and long silences rather than speeches, and you don't need events explained to you.

Skip it if you want a clear narrative with dramatic beats, since much of the political background stays implicit and the pacing is deliberately unhurried across a long runtime.

What it asks of you: Nearly two and a half hours of patient, hushed scenes, with dialogue often in several languages and dialects, so it wants you to read faces and let silence sit.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Yi Yi2000

Another Hou masterpiece about family across generations, with the same patient gaze and accumulated emotional weight. If you're moved by how *A City of Sadness* finds meaning in ordinary moments, this will devastate you.

But Nearly three hours long, and even slower than the first film. Plot barely matters; you have to surrender to rhythm and mood.

Yi Yi poster

The Assassin2015

Hou's wuxia film proves he can work in genre without losing his essence. Sumptuous visuals, whispered dialogue, moral ambiguity. A master class in restraint and suggestion over spectacle.

But Abstract, painterly, sometimes deliberately obscure. If you want clarity and momentum, this will frustrate you.

The Assassin poster

Raise the Red Lantern1991

Zhang Yimou's historical drama about a woman trapped in a patriarchal compound. Gorgeous cinematography and simmering rage. Another film where politics and personal life become inseparable.

But The aesthetic beauty can feel at odds with the story's darkness, which some find distancing rather than moving.

Raise the Red Lantern poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from A City of Sadness

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade1967

Both examine how state violence seeps into family and psyche. Both refuse to make suffering into clear moral lessons. Both use stylistic restraint alongside moments of startling intensity.

Peter Brook's theatrical film about a play-within-an-asylum. Fractured, visually radical, about how oppression and violence corrupt everything they touch. Both films use historical atrocity as lens for human fracture.

But Formally experimental and genuinely unsettling. The constant reference to psychiatric confinement makes it viscerally uncomfortable, which is the point.

The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade poster
More like this (8)

Days of Thunder1990

Tsai Ming-liang's intimate portrait of two men in late age, moving through time and silence. The quietest, most tender film about mortality you'll see. Visual poetry with almost no plot.

But Extremely slow and stripped-down. If you need narrative drive, you'll be checking your watch.

Days of Thunder poster

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring2003

Kim Ki-duk's cyclical fable set on a floating Buddhist temple. Wordless, meditative, achingly beautiful. Shares *A City of Sadness*'s ability to make suffering feel universal and quiet.

But Deliberately enigmatic and spiritual rather than dramatic. Some see profundity, others see pretension.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring poster

The Long Goodbye: The Kara Tippetts Story2019

Documentary series following a Taiwanese family preparing for a parent's death. Real, unsentimental, deeply moving. Captures the texture of family obligation and love that *A City of Sadness* hints at.

But Slow and contemplative as documentary, not narrative film. Requires patience and emotional openness.

The Long Goodbye: The Kara Tippetts Story poster

Branded to Kill1967

Masaki Kobayashi's avant-garde noir about a hitman spiraling into obsession. Experimental visual language and fatalism. Shows how politics and personal collapse intertwine, decades before Hou.

But Genuinely weird and disorienting. The style can overwhelm the story if you're not in the mood.

Branded to Kill poster

The Eternal Memory2023

Documentary following a Chilean writer with dementia and his wife. Tender, devastating, about how love persists when memory doesn't. Found footage and present-day footage interwoven. Captures what *A City of Sadness* understands about time and loss.

But Watching someone's mind dissolve is hard. The intimacy of it can feel intrusive.

The Eternal Memory poster

The Wedding Banquet1993

Ang Lee's sharp comedy about a Taiwanese family gathering around a secret. Deft tonal balance between humor and heartbreak. Shows another face of modern Taiwanese life, with warmth and wit.

But Much lighter and more comedic than *A City of Sadness*. If you want more of that film's gravity, this will feel glib.

The Wedding Banquet poster

Stalker1979

Neither film believes in catharsis or easy answers. Both suggest that meaning lives in quiet moments and contradictions, not resolution. Both are about people trying to reach something unreachable.

Tarkovsky's profound science-fiction meditation on desire, faith, and what we're willing to sacrifice. Three men journey through a mysterious zone. Hypnotic, philosophical, about the weight of longing and regret.

But Glacially slow. Nearly three hours of walking and talking. If you want plot momentum, you will be bored.

Stalker poster

Memories of Murder2003

Both films understand that historical trauma doesn't belong to one moment—it lives in families, in small choices, in silences. Both are about men navigating impossible systems with limited power.

Bong Joon-ho's serial killer procedural set during South Korea's dictatorship. Gripping, darkly funny, and utterly devastating. Shows how corruption and brutality create impossible situations for ordinary people trying to do right.

But Violence and exploitation are central to the story. Watching police corruption and incompetence lead to tragedy is grueling, not cathartic.

Memories of Murder poster

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