Criterion Collection
A Confucian Confusion / Mahjong Blu-Ray - PRE-ORDER 25-Aug-25
A Confucian Confusion / Mahjong Blu-Ray - PRE-ORDER 25-Aug-25
SKU:CC3717BDUK
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In this pair of sharp, sprawling satires, one of Taiwan’s most celebrated filmmakers, Edward Yang, captures the anything-can-happen mood of Taipei at the end of the twentieth century. Made in between his epic dramas A Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi, A Confucian Confusion and Mahjong find Yang applying a lighter but no less masterly touch to his explorations of human relationships in an increasingly globalized, hypercapitalistic world. These intricately constructed ensemble comedies—one set in a cutthroat corporate milieu, the other in a shady criminal underworld—reveal the absurdity and cynicism at the heart of modern urban life.
A Confucian Confusion
Edward Yang’s first foray into comedy may have been a surprising stylistic departure, but in its richly novelistic vision of urban discontent, it is quintessential Yang. This relationship roundelay centres on a coterie of young Taipei professionals whose paths converge at an entertainment company where the boundaries between art and commerce, love and business, have become hopelessly blurred. Evoking the chaos of a city infiltrated by Western chains, logos, and attitudes, A Confucian Confusion is an incisive reflection on the role of traditional values in a materialistic, amoral society.
Mahjong
Edward Yang’s follow-up to A Confucian Confusion is another dizzying comedy set in a globalized Taipei, but with a darker, more caustic edge. Amid a rapidly changing cityscape, the lives of a disparate group of swindlers, hustlers, gangsters, and expats collide, with a naive French teenager (Virginie Ledoyen) and a sensitive young local (Lawrence Ko) who tries to protect her caught dangerously in the middle. By turns brutal, shocking, tender, and bitingly funny, Mahjong is a dazzling vision of a multicultural Taipei where nearly every relationship has a price and newfound prosperity comes at the expense of the human soul.
TWO-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restorations, with 5.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
- Excerpts of director Edward Yang speaking after a 1994 screening of A Confucian Confusion
- New interview with editor Chen Po-wen
- New conversation between Chinese-cultural-studies scholar Michael Berry and film critic Justin Chang
- Performance of Yang’s 1992 play Likely Consequence
- PLUS: An essay by film programmer and critic Dennis Lim and a 1994 director’s note on A Confucian Confusion
- New cover by Tori Huynh
