Although Nature of Mother (無邊) features the first Taiwanese expedition to the south pole, it is hardly the main story. We do see some of the crew’s hardships and enjoy stunning shots of them trudging through the unforgiving, snow-blasted environment, but it’s really about director Yang Li-chou’s (楊力州) exploration of his inner demons and his relationship with his family.
The audience never really gets to know the team members, their backgrounds and their motivations behind the perilous 15-day endeavor, where they have to literally sign their lives away. The entire purpose of the trip is not clearly stated, and the few scenes featuring individual crew members are disjointed, as their emotions and situation mostly serve to segue into Yang’s reflections.
The serious mishaps, such as finding that they don’t have enough rations to finish the journey, are barely explained, nor how they eventually overcame the odds to make national history in December 2018. Even Yang losing his medication and equipment doesn’t seem like a big deal; we never learn why it happened or how he copes.
Photo courtesy of Backstage Studio
This inward-looking, contemplative setting is evident from the beginning, however, as the film opens with Yang giving a spirited presentation about his career that moves the audience to tears. Something is not right, however, as his voice fades in and out, and the footage is full of glitches that briefly cut to shots of space and the moon.
“But I don’t love myself,” he says in a voiceover.
Yang is best known for his hot-blooded, inspirational movies of underdog success — from the indigenous teens in 2006’s My Football Summer (奇蹟的夏天) to 2011’s Young at Heart: Grandma Cheerleaders (青春啦啦隊). His more recent, 18-part Weirdo Series (怪咖系列) minidocumentaries are also uplifting celebrations of those who strive to blaze their own paths.
Photo courtesy of Backstage Studio
Given the subject, one would expect Nature of Mother to follow the same vein, but it seems like Yang can’t do it anymore. He’s clearly haunted by something to the point of near-debilitation, and going on this journey of potentially no return seems to be his way of trying to deal with it. He juxtaposes the Taiwanese expedition with eerily jumbled footage from the doomed British Terra Nova Antarctic expedition of 1912, adding to the somber and ominous mood. The Antarctic landscape is otherworldly enough, and Yang’s treatment further pushes the film into the surreal, to the point where we forget that they’re in a life-and-death situation almost every day.
His words of despair float in and out of the story, along with faded scenes of his parents, wife and children. At one point he mentions that he wouldn’t mind if they never made it home; he later asks, “Why am I willing to die for my mother instead of living for my children?”
It’s quite heavy stuff, but it’s also poignant to see a well-known director bare his heart like this. It’s unclear if he finds what he needs in the South Pole, and perhaps this is just the beginning of him trying to face himself.
While other directors seem to be making their productions longer, too often for no apparent reason, Yang is going in the opposite direction. His previous feature, Love Without Clutching, Leave Without Guilt (愛別離苦), crammed the emotionally-charged stories of six women into 77 minutes; Nature of Mother clocks in at just exactly one hour.
It feels like just enough time for what Yang personally wants to say, but perhaps there could have been more room for the expedition and its intrepid crew members who went on the adventure of their lives.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
Despite the intense sunshine, we were hardly breaking a sweat as we cruised along the flat, dedicated bike lane, well protected from the heat by a canopy of trees. The electric assist on the bikes likely made a difference, too. Far removed from the bustle and noise of the Taichung traffic, we admired the serene rural scenery, making our way over rivers, alongside rice paddies and through pear orchards. Our route for the day covered two bike paths that connect in Fengyuan District (豐原) and are best done together. The Hou-Feng Bike Path (后豐鐵馬道) runs southward from Houli District (后里) while the
President William Lai’s (賴清德) March 13 national security speech marked a turning point. He signaled that the government was finally getting serious about a whole-of-society approach to defending the nation. The presidential office summarized his speech succinctly: “President Lai introduced 17 major strategies to respond to five major national security and united front threats Taiwan now faces: China’s threat to national sovereignty, its threats from infiltration and espionage activities targeting Taiwan’s military, its threats aimed at obscuring the national identity of the people of Taiwan, its threats from united front infiltration into Taiwanese society through cross-strait exchanges, and its threats from
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at