CHUNG MONG-HONG: THE EMBERS 余烬 (2024) New York Asian Film Festival 2025

A police investigation digs up Taiwan's murderous and politically complex past

The film begins energetically, from the genre viewpoint, with a murder in a busy market place full of people. The killer comes up and stabs the victim in the stomach with a big knife. He dies later in the hospital. The whole homocide squad of the cops is on the case thereafter. A big wall in their collective office is covered with maps and photographs pertaining to putatively connected cases. It's all very promising. But eventually this vastly ambitious movie gets mired in endless interviews and multiple investigatory threads whose tie-ins with Taiwan's painful history only confuse, and judging by revidews, for some locals, may offend. There is much need for reconciliation in Taiwanese history, and while approaching it through a crime drama is new and original, it may not be the best way to learn about one's national history.

It's 2006. A diligent police detective, Chang (Chang Chen) winds up investigating with his squad two murder cases ultimately seen as connected, which lead back to a communist spy case from 1956, where the victims' fathers are all linked to a reading club. (He doesn't identify the second Caotun case as connected to the market case till nearly an hour into the film.). Along the way, the detective crosses paths with a food factory owner (Mo Tsu-yi) who is also probing his own father's mysterious death, and there is a young woman (Hsu Wei-Ning) whose father disappeared, who has taught English in Thailand. Since Chang works with a squad and under a stern captain (Chen Yi-wen), this is an ensemble piece as well. And since it must meander in an understandable and engaging way, credit is due to editor Lai Hsiu-Hsiung for maintaining flow, though this is a very complicated story. One needs an elaborate plot summary going in, like with the Metropolitan Opera.

In that past era, so many tragedies," says an older cop being questoned about an old case. And this is a theme of the film, which is moody and meandering, in a sort of Zodiac style, except that the killings are not all from one source. There are a number of men identified who disappeared and were never found, including cops. The period of 1949 until 1987, the long White Terror Kuomintang (KMT) era in Taiwanese history, was one of poverty and brutality that recent-generation Taiwanese audience members are reminded of here. One person says at that time they'd as soon kill 100 people to get one guilty one. The spy case leads to a scene where the accused are executed. Chang eventually discovers that Mo Tsu-yi has set up a program of vendettas against the people who victimized his father in the past, and this leads to a climactic, violent confrontation.

The cinematography credit seems to go to director Chung Mong-hong; anyway there are varied middle-distance outdoor walk-and-talk sequences for the numerous police interviews. Nice to have pauses for breath, but one violent police raid on an unexpectedly well-armed drug dealer may make you wish there had been more such moments to liven up such a long run-time (nearly two and three-quarters hours). But the main theme, as the title says, is always the still-smouldering remains of a violent past - though the word is specifically traced back to a missing father's English crossword puzzle, where it was the answer to the clue: "what burns without a flame."

The Wikipedia article for The Embers summarizes three local paper reviews, all unfavorable, both for being too talky and for misusing or misrepresenting the White Terror era that it connects with through its police investigation story, allegedly triviliizing the sufferings of victims of the time and even portraying them as evildoers. I can't assess these claims, but it seems clear that for Taiwanese the era is a touchy topic to deal with in a genre context.

More importantly there is too much material here and a mini-series might have been the better format. Or a novel.

The Embers 余烬 (Yu Jin), 162 mins., premiered at Taipei Nov.15, 2024, receiving five Golden Horse awards; also Rome Apr. 9, 2025, Singapore May 4, 2025. Screened for this review as part of the Jul. 11-12, 2025 New York Asian Film Festival.
Tuesday July 22, 8:45pm
SVA Theatre

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.