Goodbye, Dragon Inn [Blu-ray] [2020]

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In the only fast cut sequence in the film, the cashier is momentarily mesmerised by the fighting skills of the on-screen movie’s female action star Shangguan Lingfeng, the rapid back-and-forth cutting between the two hinting at the cashier’s dreams for life that fate has denied her. Tsai paints his movies at the speed of Michelangelo painting a ceiling--no, he unreels them at the speed of the epic that's played this old movie house a thousand times. It’s not hard to see parallels with the cinema of Béla Tarr, another filmmaker who favours lingering on images for far longer than conventional wisdom dictates, a technique that peaked in the seven-hour Sátántangó.

Conducted in Taipei City in 2020, this hugely informative and engaging interview with director Tsai Ming-Liang is a first-rate companion to the film itself. Watching the cashier make her way slowly up the steps of this cathedral of a cinema with its decaying walls and water-stained floors really does have a sense of sad finality to it, with the water that drips steadily through its leaking roof having the metaphoric feel of tears being shed by the venue for its imminent demise. Similarly featured is the handicapped box office cashier (Chen Hsiang-Chyi), who is first seen as her other duties cause her to just miss the arrival of the Japanese tourist and is then observed at length tucking into a sizeable steamed rice bun, a piece of which she decides to give to the projectionist (Tsai regular Lee Kang-Sheng). The movie's point of view is variously that of the young limping woman, the Japanese kid, and the old actors, but ultimately, Tsai tells the story from the theater's point of view, as if he interviewed it Tsai-style, pointing the camera at it and letting the theater speak at its edificial pace.Madam Butterfly (2009, 36 mins): world home-video premiere of Tsai s remarkable modern-day interpretation of the classic story. A Japanese tourist seeks a homosexual encounter; Chen Chao-jung brushes off his advance and tells him the place is haunted. The community that has outgrown the old Fu Ho cinema seems to tell its patrons, its employees, and even the building itself that all of them really ought to be somewhere else. In an old Taipei movie theatre, on the eve of a ‘temporary closing’, King Hu’s 1967 wuxia classic Dragon Inn plays to a dwindling audience. When the woman approaches the ticket office, for instance, the angle chosen suggests the ticket seller was not in on the gag and was thus expected not to sell the woman a ticket because she is just short of the required fare, but when seller is encouraged by others to accept this lower payment she agrees, and a reason for declining this offer then has to be quickly manufactured, or at least that’s the way it seems.

As in other Tsai movies, the colors are rich, and even the starkest images are carefully composed, allowing the film to convey the full depth of feelings. By the time he elects to move seats it occurred to me that I’d been watching this unfold in a single shot in real time, and that this was why it felt so familiar to me. stereo soundtrack that I’m assuming is the truest to how the film originally played is partnered with a DTS-HD 5.

Its simple, meticulously composed frames are full of mystery and feeling; it's an action movie that stands perfectly still. Why, I wondered on occasion, is this image being held on for this length, past when it has not only done its job but underscored it multiple times? The King is now a megachurch, the Coliseum is a Banana Republic, and the UA is dust, with the marquee sign marking its grave.