Goodbye, Dragon Inn

Tsai Ming-liang's "Goodbye Dragon Inn" is a spectacularly dull movie, a limp ode to the bygone days of cinema-going. A film smitten with its own stasis, "Goodbye" culminates in a shot held for an obscene amount of time of an empty movie theater. Tsai's known for holding his shots way past the point most directors yell cut, and the result can be strikingly effective in the right context (the brilliant final shot of "Vive L'Amour") but "Goodbye" is almost an art film parody in its studied minimalism. The money shot in particular is a groan-inducer that makes you long for a fast-forward button.

"Goodbye Dragon Inn" sounds like it ought to appeal: a homage to the glory days of cinema by a great director, but Tsai seems to be resting on the assumption that anything he cranks out these days is destined for acclaim (which is true). However, ever since "The Hole" Tsai's inspiration appears to be running out; what in the earlier films seems innovative comes off as mannered in the later ones. "What Time is it There?" is a good flick but hardly feels like anything new from the filmmaker, "The Skywalk is Gone" is a short-film punchline for "What Time?," and "Goodbye" is just grinding. Tsai's probably incapable of making a thoroughly awful movie and there are spots of greatness in "Goodbye Dragon Inn," but hardly enough to justify a feature-length film. You can almost feel the director yawning behind the camera as he's filming, telling his actress to just continue sitting for an interminable amount of time so he can pad it just a little more (though the movie is only 80 minutes long it feels much, much longer). The director's always threatened to deadend his limited stylistic resources and "Goodbye Dragon Inn" is the wall he's always threatened to hit. I like Tsai and think he has some worthwhile things to say, but he's said the same things over and over again and the point's been made. People these days have trouble connecting, the values of the old days have become buried under the industrial rubble of progress, yes yes. Tsai fixates on the same themes in the same way he fixates on an empty theater or a woman hobbling slowly across the screen. Since there isn't too terribly much variety thematically or stylistically in the his films, familiarity with his past work leads to a feeling of having repeatedly tread the same path. It takes a true master to be able to be as stubbornly dwell on the same ideas in the same manner over the course of a career and pull it off, and Tsai is hardly a Bresson or Ozu. Flashes of brilliance and invention are certainly to be found in Tsai's movies, but "Goodbye" just uses minimalism to mask its lack of substance. Slow movies don't have to be tedious and unrewarding, as a few Tsai Ming-liang films have demonstrated, but often the tendency among art film devotees is to equivocate slow and good. "Goodbye Dragon Inn" isn't very good. The ideas are slight, the homage curiously lacks feeling, and the whole thing just drags along way past the point of interest like Tsai's lead actress down the corridor.

At the risk of coming on too strong, I think the other posters here who disliked this film were idiots. True, Good-bye Dragon Inn is EXTREMELY slow. Almost nothing happens in the film. Nonetheless, it is truly excellent. A great, subtle ghost story...

It's especially good if you have ever been to any of the big, old, concrete movie theaters in Asia... Theaters that are now being totally replaced by multiplexes.

Good-bye Dragon Inn is basically a poem to the old cinema culture of Asia. I have great memories of going to those huge, decaying movie theaters... in summer to escape the heat... during the rainy season, when the sound of the rain almost drowned out the film itself. Great stuff.

It has been nearly two weeks since I saw Bu jian bu san (Goodbye, Dragon Inn) and I still can't get some of the images out of my mind. This is partly due to the fact that the director (Ming- liang Tsai) holds onto an image, a scene, long after, or before any action occurs. In doing so he insists the viewer bear witness to its own self re-presentation in the form of characters in a film they are watching.

Two of the finest moments in the film are moments where the camera is pointed back towards the mostly empty chairs of the cinema itself. In one, an actor who appeared in the original kung-fu film Dragon Inn watches a scene from the original. As the camera settles on his face, we are pulled ever closer, listening to the original's soundtrack while watching the actor as a receptive viewer. We are watching the emotions of time and change develop on his face. Finally, with his face in extreme close-up and the water glistening in his eyes with the film's light reflecting in them a single tear falls down his cheek.

Near the end of the film as the old classic has ended the camera is again pointed to the empty chairs of the cinema. There is no one there, then on the far side of the frame the ticket woman enters with bucket and mop. She walks across, up the stairs, back down and out the left side of the screen, literally walking off the frame as the camera remains motionless. He holds this shot for what many will argue is an interminable time. But he wants you to really take in this shot, consider what you are witness of, think about your own place now, viewing a film.

There is far more to this film than just these two scenes. They just exemplify the kind of artful ways this film explores the nature of action and reaction. What adds to this already complex and studied examination of cinema and the cinema viewing experience is the exquisite cinematography done by Ben-Bong Liao. If you love film, especially film that asks you to fully participate in the moment, then find a screening of this film and get lost in it.

It's reasonable to assume that the Producer of this movie is one happy bunny because he sure didn't have to devote much of the budget to raw stock, in fact you could practically have shot it on short ends, a la Martin Benson. I doubt if there are more than 50 shots in the entire 82 minutes and possibly even less. The director's idea appears to be to nail the camera to the floor, snap on a wide-angle lens, shoot everything in deep focus and let the actors drift in and out of frame as and when the spirit moves them. The shooting ratio must have been an incredible one-to-one as opposed to an average six/eight-to-one. What happens? Well you might ask. It's a rainy night in Tapei. A guy ducks into an old barn of a cinema to beat the downpour. There's a movie in progress, Dragon Inn, a martial arts entry from another age. There's one employee, a lame girl who does everything but project the film. She leads us on a tour of the soon-to-be-closed-forever cinema. Leads is perhaps the wrong word. As I said the camera is nailed to the floor. The girl limps into frame and we follow her progress from our static vantage point. She prepares some kind of food that resembles coconut ice, eats some herself and takes the rest to the projection box which is all of twenty minutes walk away. in the absence of the projy she leaves the food where he will find it and repeats the journey in reverse. Meanwhile there are about three or four men watching the film. With something like six or seven hundred seats to choose from they opt for sitting together, moving several times til this is accomplished. At least one of the men was an actor in the film being shown and weeps to remember his youth. In one of the largest men's toilets I've ever seen in a cinema (at least 20 urinals) a single man is standing at one of them. Another man enters and with 19 urinals available opts to use the one next to the first man. Time passes. A lot of time. A third man enters, notices the 18 empty urinals and opts to join the other two. More time passes. A toilet flushes and a man leaves a stall and leans over the three men to collect his cigarettes from the ledge above them. More time passes. This is either a masterpiece or the worst thing to happen to movies since Peter Greenaway. Finally the movie ends the lights come up. The camera is nailed down approximately where the screen would be, looking out at the empty auditorium. Time passes. The girl enters from the left with a mop and bucket. She walks up three or four rows then between the seats and down the Right aisle. She exits. Time passes. A LOT of time. Finally we see the projectionist rewinding the film. The girl leaves the cinema It's still raining. A notice says the cinema is 'temporarily' closed. A jaunty yet melancholy 'pop' song from another age plays us out. End of story. Despite several walk-outs around me I stayed with it til the end. It does grow on you.

Seeing this as part of the London Film Festival I had few expectations of the movie and was initially pleased to see the large cinema was a almost a sell-out. However, by the end of this 82 minute feature approximately a quarter of the audience had walked out and to be honest I am surprised that so many remained. Bravely, the film appears to ignore most conventions for film-making; dialogue, narrative and character development are rarely in evidence. The long still shots and selective use of sound (focusing primarily on footsteps and 'small' sounds from within the scene) created an eerie atmosphere but the film's content failed to capitalise on this platform to generate further interest in the characters or development of the themes.

Other films and directors (Tarkovsky) have created genuinely unique movies which have required significant commitment from the audience. However, on this occasion the director strays too far, the film demands too much from the viewer and offers scant return for this time. It reminded me of the experience of seeing a Russian film of the early 90s, The Stone (dir Sokurov), both these films require significant concentration and commitment from their viewers yet for me they both signify the excesses of arthouse cinema.