All PostsDir. Tsai Ming-Liang (2003). DVD. This is a slow and beautiful film–the former quality nicely works with the latter to allow one to linger over the images presented. Ming-Liang must spend a great deal of time working out his settings. Colors are vivid and complementary–even a public washroom is presented in muted yellows and blues. The whole film takes place in a movie theater of labyrinthine proportions. It is old and decrepit but in such a way as to be visually alluring. Though we see characters traversing the corridors and rooms, I could never get a firm hold on the size of the place. The theater is surreal, dreamlike. In one scene a young man wanders amidst piled rows of boxes, quickly disorienting the viewer and creating a dreamlike space that seems without beginning or end.
What is the film about? The span of a film in the theater. The comings and goings of different characters. Not much on the surface. A woman sits in the ticket booth, wanders the halls, does some cleaning, watches a bit of the movie. A young man wanders around, seemingly cruising for men, yet never connecting with any of them. Various characters sit and watch a kung-fu movie. The movie’s dialogue provides almost the only dialogue in the 80 minutes of running time. Otherwise there are probably less than ten lines of dialogue exchanged. Viewers of the film appear and disappear like ghosts (which are alluded to in one line of dialogue).
Ming-Liang uses water excessively in his films (Others I’ve seen What Time is it There? and The River). It must be a symbol of something. In this case rain falls throughout, dripping through the roof into buckets, pooling into the entryway.
Critics say that the film is about movies themselves, the vanished golden age. I don’t feel qualified to comment on that, though just through a concentration on the dialogue one gets the feeling of nostalgia and the past. Either way, this is a beautiful, poetic work.