Every narrative deals with opposites. This is one of the defining elements for creating dramatic tension. Dramatic tension is what keeps us engaged in a story. The four types of dramatic tension in classical drama are relationships, tasks, surprises, and mysteries.
The tension of relationships explores conflicts between characters—family members, lovers, rivals. The tension of tasks focuses on what characters want to accomplish. The tension of surprise hooks us into the story through unexpected events. The tension of mystery, however, keeps us engaged through our desire for resolution or, simply put, the need to find out what exactly happened.
Any one of these tensions can be the backbone of a compelling narrative. They do not ensure, of course, a great story, but they are part of every great one.
What they all have in common is, in my opinion, crucial for analyzing Taiwanese director Chung Mong-hong’s 2019 film A Sun. In all of these types of dramatic tension, we deal with opposites. In relationships, it can be summed up as love versus hate. In tasks, success versus failure. In surprises, the ordinary versus the extraordinary. And in mysteries, the known versus the unknown.
The movie follows Ho Chen and his friend Radish committing a violent crime at the beginning of the film. Ho is sent to a juvenile detention facility, while Radish—the one who actually committed the crime—is sent to prison. Ho’s father, Wen, is reluctant to defend his son, as he holds the belief that he failed as a father in disciplining him.
What follows is a series of events in which we learn that Ho, prior to committing the crime, impregnated a fifteen-year-old girl named Yu. She wants to keep the baby and, since she is an orphan, Ho’s mother Qin agrees to let her stay with them until Ho gets out of detention in three years’ time.
We also meet Hao, the second son of the Chen family and Ho’s older brother. Unlike Ho and his wasted potential, Hao seems to live by the slogan his father constantly repeats: “Seize the Day, Decide Your Path.”
Hao is preparing for medical school and has all the markings of a poster child. However, we immediately come to know him as extremely shy and down-to-earth when it comes to the potential everyone ascribes to him. He finds shelter in the form of a romantic interest—Zhen, his classmate—although the movie does not go too deep into exploring this relationship at first.
Meanwhile, Ho goes through the usual fiery baptism often portrayed in movies about prison life. He gets into trouble with older inmates, only to later crack the social code and become part of the gang, for lack of a better word.
Ho’s mother Qin keeps quiet about Yu and the pregnancy during her weekly visits. However, when Hao and Yu later visit Ho alone, Hao decides to inform his younger brother about the pregnancy. Ho is furious at having been kept in the dark.
Any attentive viewer could easily guess how the story would unfold from here. Director Chung, however, throws us a curveball and twists the narrative in an unexpected direction. Wen, the father, is woken up in the middle of the night by his neighbor, who informs him that Hao’s body has been found lying on the ground floor of the apartment complex where the family lives.
After the funeral, Qin is approached by Zhen—Hao’s girlfriend, whom she did not know about—who shares Hao’s last message with her. In it, Qin learns that Hao felt burdened by the expectations placed upon him. Zhen describes him as someone who gave “all the goodness to others and forgot to keep any for himself.” She then tells Qin about the last conversation she had with him. Hao asked her, “What do you think is the fairest thing in the world?” His own answer to the question was “the sun.”
After Hao’s death, Yu and Ho marry while Ho is still in the detention center.
Ho moves back home after one and a half years in detention. Wen continues to ignore him and even sleeps in the break room at his workplace just to avoid being in the same space as his son. In the meantime, Ho cleans up his act and takes on two jobs in order to provide for his family, working at a car wash during the day and at a convenience store at night.
One night, unaware that his son works there, Wen walks into the convenience store to buy cigarettes. They have a short conversation and seem to reconcile. Ho informs him that he plans to move out and get a place of his own.
Three years later, Radish shows up, freshly released from prison. He starts visiting Ho at the car wash, asking him for money and favors. Ho is distressed by his presence but has no choice but to indulge in the games Radish plays with him.
The symbolism of Ho cleaning cars while Radish threatens his efforts works well with the overarching theme of redemption and reintegration into society. Ho is an example of someone who actually benefited from being locked up, while Radish seems to have been pushed even further into the world of crime.
After repeatedly asking Ho for money and favors, and guilt-tripping him for not visiting him in prison after Ho’s release, Radish disappears for a while.
Ho’s father Wen becomes concerned about Radish and attempts to bribe him to stay away from his son. Radish dismisses the offer, making it clear to both Wen and the audience that there is no turning back from the path he is on.
Radish later visits Ho again at night at the car wash and coerces him into going for a ride in an expensive client’s car. After arriving at a remote property, Radish hands Ho a backpack and instructs him to deliver it to someone inside the house. Ho does so and receives a large sum of money in exchange. When he returns to the car, Radish is nowhere to be found. Ho drives back to the car wash and starts cleaning the car.
Some time later, Ho is kidnapped by a group of gangsters who demand the money he received. When he gives it to them, they are surprised that he did not spend any of it. The gang leader then tells Ho that Radish will no longer be a problem, as he was found dead in a ditch. They give Ho some of the money and release him.
Meanwhile, we watch Wen and Qin visit Hao’s grave, after which they decide to go on a hike. Qin accuses Wen of not being there for Ho and of failing to live up to the motto he constantly repeats: “Seize the Day, Decide Your Path.” Wen then tells Qin that he has been skipping work to keep an eye on Ho. We learn that he was present on the night Radish and Ho drove to the remote property. He followed them in his car and, once Ho went inside to deliver the package, ran Radish down with his car and hid the body.
The movie ends when Ho and his mother later go through Hao’s belongings and discover a stack of old notebooks Wen had gifted to Hao for medical school. Each notebook bears Wen’s motto: “Seize the Day, Decide Your Path.” Hao never used them. Ho and his mother then decide to go for a bike ride through the park.
Right off the bat, we notice that the four types of dramatic tension mentioned at the beginning are present throughout the film. Relationships between the characters drive the narrative. The tension of tasks manifests in Ho’s attempt to provide for his family and get his life back on track. Surprises continually subvert expectations, the most significant being Hao’s sudden suicide. The tension of mystery is also present in the final act, with Radish’s disappearance and the audience waiting to find out what happened to him.
Chung hits all of these notes almost perfectly. The relationships are fleshed out, the twists are unexpected yet believable, the tasks are relatable, and the mystery remains engaging without becoming so elaborate that it undermines the film’s naturalistic portrayal of a family pushed to the edge by tragedy.
One of the main themes that stood out to me, however, is the question of opposites and how they are used to define subjects in the world.
To explore this, I will briefly touch on the theory of structuralism. Originally introduced in linguistics by Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, structuralism argues that elements of culture gain meaning through their relationship to other elements within the same structure.
A tree is a tree because it is not a dog, not a house, not a smile, and so on. According to structuralism, no sign has a positive value in itself. Its meaning is derived solely from its difference from other signs in the same system. In other words, we understand meaning by contrast. This is especially evident in binary oppositions such as male/female, black/white, small/big, rich/poor, good/evil.
In A Sun, I focus on the dichotomy of absolute good and absolute evil, represented by Hao and Radish respectively. We do not need extensive analysis to see how these characters embody their respective extremes. Hao is morally incorruptible and deeply concerned with fairness. Radish, by contrast, appears irredeemably evil, even when given a chance at redemption. He is unconcerned with how fortune is distributed and cares only about how much benefit he himself receives.
We could debate the social and economic factors that shaped these two individuals, and such a discussion would be important before labeling someone as evil. The film, however, does not provide enough information about their development to support such an analysis.
Neither Hao nor Radish evolves over the course of the film. There is no traditional character arc, nor insight into what shaped their behavior. Hao’s suicide is not fully explained; we are left to assume that his goodness could not survive the world he inhabited. Radish’s origin is likewise unexplained, raising the question of why we are so eager to interrogate the roots of evil while rarely asking what produces goodness.
For the sake of this analysis, we take these characters as they are presented within the narrative. As binary opposites, they define each other through contrast. Hao is good because Radish is evil.
This dichotomy drives most narratives: good versus evil, light versus darkness. Even stories that attempt to blur these lines tend to preserve a final distinction. A Sun abandons this blurring altogether. The narrative is not interested in questioning Hao’s goodness or Radish’s evilness. Instead, it tells a more compelling story about Ho and his attempt to exist as a third term within a dualistic worldview.
Returning to structuralism, there is no easy place for Ho. He cannot be cleanly defined in opposition to either his brother or Radish. In reality, Ho exists in opposition to both at once, something structuralism struggles to account for.
This limitation is one of the reasons structuralism was later criticized by poststructuralist thinkers.
Ho functions as a wrench thrown into the carefully constructed gears of a dualistic worldview. If good and evil were easily distinguishable, life might make sense. We could summarize existence in a simple motto like “Seize the Day,” which is exactly what Wen hopes for. But if absolute good and absolute evil do not truly exist, then the structures through which we produce meaning must be questioned.
French philosopher Jacques Derrida criticized structuralism for its reliance on binary oppositions. While structuralists saw meaning as emerging from difference, Derrida argued that meaning arises from the endless interplay of signifiers.
Saussure viewed the sign as composed of the signifier and the signified. The word “tree,” for example, is a signifier referring not to a physical object but to a psychological concept—the signified. While the signifier is arbitrary, Saussure treated the signified as stable.
Derrida challenged this by arguing that a signifier refers not only to a signified but also to everything it does not mean. When we say “woman,” we evoke not just the concept of woman, but also man, child, object, and so on. Derrida called this absence within presence the trace.
Applied to A Sun, Hao’s actions signify goodness while simultaneously evoking the absence of evil. Radish’s actions signify evil while evoking the absence of goodness.
Meaning emerges not from absolute concepts but from this interplay. Hao’s goodness and Radish’s evilness reflect one another, never fully arriving at an absolute. In this movement, the only stable meaning is Ho.
Absolute goodness cannot survive, so Hao dies. Absolute evil cannot persist, so Radish dies. If they did not, Ho could never be defined. His existence would remain trapped in an endless oscillation between extremes.
Although A Sun is a drama in the truest sense, it does not shy away from moments of humor. Its heavy themes are often punctuated by light, bittersweet moments of silliness. Much like life itself, the sun shines equally on all experience.