Good-Bye, Dragon Inn (2003)

Ming-liang Tsai is known for his slow and aesthetically driven movies. I must admit that Good-bye, Dragon Inn was exhausting at times, but in the end, it is clearly a movie I would encourage you to watch; as in other movies in which there is no narrative to speak of, no clear center of a story that goes from a to b, you are really forced to watch as the images are not defined in the sense that it is self-evident what you should be paying attention to. Nonetheless, I was not able to suppress the question: what purpose does this extreme slowness (Tarkovsky's movies pale in comparison) serve? How is it connected with the themes of the film? The setting is a movie theater. It becomes clear that this cinema is about to close its doors. We see a woman working in the cinema, which seems almost deserted. The static camera (tilted at a strange angle) follows her routines: heating a snack, walking down a corridor etc.. The cinema is still showing movies, but only a couple of people show up. It's raining outside, and the rain is leaking into the roof. Sometimes, all you can here is the gentle sound of the rain. Good-bye Dragon Inn patiently sits down besides or behind the neck of these last movie-goers (one of whom seems more interested in flirting with men, another pair crying while watching the movie). I am not sure whether this is a wistful homage to a dying social institution, or whether the cinema is portrayed as a place that is bound to die out. Maybe the answer is: both.

Only a very few lines are spoken in the film. Ming-liang Tsai strips down cinema to its bare bones, at the same time he is showing patrons in a huge non-crowded room looking at bustling scenes on a screen - they are in fact watching a sword-fighting movie. This juxtaposition between film as engrossing viewing pleasure, as a flight, as a place for lonely contemplation, as diversion and as attention works pretty well, and I never thought that the result gets too self-conscious (we are not watching a Godard movie) but the risk is there. The eerie beauty of the film is rooted in everyday things, but at the same time the whole place is somehow cut off from reality (the entire film takes place within the cinema theater). I don't know whether I have seen any film in which the place of movie-watching is as nakedly exposed as in this film, where desperation intermingles with sadness and loneliness - and nostalgia (Aki Kaurismäki would perhaps like this stylized movie about the pleasure and strangeness of cinema).

So how does this work? I mean, the odds are small against a film that has no story, where the camera remains static and where we now next to nothing about the people we see. It still works. It's wrong to say Good-bye Dragon Inn is more style than content, but it is impossible not to mention its colors and its grasp of movement (even if these movements themselves remain at a snail's pace). If you've watched films by Wong Kar-Wai you know what I'm talking about (their cinematic sensibilities are somewhat similar).

Did I mention this is a funny movie? You might not believe it, but somehow, it is. If you've experience the dreadful company of popcorn-munching movie-goers, maybe you will get the kinds of jokes the film quietly deals in.