Mahjong (1996)

Written and directed by Edward Yang

The slow seep of western culture into Taiwan has been a steady fixation of Edward Yang. His second feature, Taipei Story, took a melancholy approach to showing a culture in rapid transition from the old ways towards new, anglicized frontiers, and his masterpiece, A Brighter Summer Days, set in the 60s, showed the onset, with U.S. cultural imports like rockabilly fashion manifesting among the youth. 

Mahjong slides in between. A more comedic take on this cultural shift, it’s also a more cynical observation of the same. Money, greedy stupid money, has Taipei in its clutches. “Respectable” businessmen owe gangsters millions, foreigners, be they people or corporations, are moving in, looking to take advantage of the wealth of Taiwan. A youth gang runs schemes to make a fast buck or get laid, and their leader, Red Fish, says there are only two types of people in the world: crooks and dopes. That’s what his father taught him.

Watching Mahjong, it’d be hard to disagree. Red Fish and pals prey on women and men they believe are easy targets. They care for little more than their own hides. Only new recruit Luen-Luen is not hardened to that extent yet, so when the boys mark a bright-eyed French girl as their next victim, he has qualms. 

Are the kids all right? No. 

The Taipei of Mahjong is a sham. Everyone has a hustle going, and the material wealth they flash is either ill-gotten gains or a lie. No matter what it is, nobody comes by it honestly. They strive to drive a Mercedes, listen to classical music, and when they go out to eat, it’s at TGI Friday’s and Hard Rock Cafe. The cultural hegemony is real, Yang argues, and so are its effects. Is there even a boogeyman to chase?

Yang’s treatment of the situation takes some of the sting out of it, mostly because everyone involved, from marks to marksmen, are bozos or just children. Everyone talks a big game, and Yang’s script is full of hot air or tantrums that play together to produce something close to farce at times. Its main characters are comedic in their naive delusion, and the secondary characters are more flat caricatures meant solely for laughs, or in the case of one goodfella-wannabe, to make us laugh and move the plot along. 

It’s all fairly outsized, lessening the effect, and the shenanigans do include a romantic subplot that provides both something surprising and sweet, and in tending to this more naive endeavor, Mahjong suggests we might be redeemable through love.

Mahjong is one of those movies that does feature a society in decay, and things are so amiss that all you can do is laugh. From the moral void it depicts, to the cruel manipulation that void engenders, the Taipei Yang observes has little going for it except the small acts of grace found in the dirty cracks. It has near constant laughs, even as you fear for the worst in every scene, and it’s this balance that’s a curious pleasure. Nervous laughs are still laughs. Yang does have a disheartened outlook, but he doesn’t quite give in to despair. Mahjong remains a humanist tale even as the misanthropy makes the most noise. 

One could argue that its ending is the one it wants, but not the one it deserves based on what’s occurred up until then, but I won’t ever begrudge any piece of art’s desire to emphasize the potential for good rather than the obvious presence of evil. The difference between them is like the difference between a comment and a question at a Q&A: one an obnoxious self-indulgence however true it might be; the other a move to open up the world.