"Detention" Director John Hsu turns The Game depicting the dark side of Taiwanese history, the era of white terror, into a movie [Director's Interview Vol.128]

Respect for classic movies and audience reactions

Q: There are many masterpieces about the White Terror, such as " A Brighter Summer Day " (1991), " A City of Sadness " (1989), and " Super Citizen " (1995). How did you keep these works in mind when working on this film? Were there any direct inspirations?

Sue: The three films you just mentioned were the main references for this film. They are celebrated as masterpieces in Taiwan, and we watched them many times ourselves - of course, we can't say they are on the same level as those works - and we wondered if we could somehow find hints that could be applied to our own film.

However, films like "A Brighter Summer Day," "A City of Sadness," and "Super Citizen" were all made 20 to 30 years ago, so they are difficult for today's young people to relate to. So with "Detention," I wanted to let young people know about the era of the White Terror. I hope that if this film sparks their interest, they will be able to come across these classic films as they search for materials.

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Q: What was the reaction from the younger audience?

Sue: The response was bigger than we expected. We made it with the hope that the teenage audience would empathize with it, but we never expected it to have such a big impact. We received Arrival from audiences around 15-16 years old, which made us really happy. We got responses from a really wide range of people, not just young people.

Q: By the way, what was the reaction of older people who remember the White Terror at the time?

Sue: After the screening, we had a roundtable discussion with the audience, and some of the older audience members said, "Through this movie, I was able to look back on the past again." As decades have passed since then, some people's memories of the horrific experiences they had back then, or their daily lives, are gradually becoming vaguer. Some people told us that watching this movie brought their memories back to life and helped them sort out their memories.