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Goodbye, Dragon Inn.
Cinema, the old cinema is dead, and this film is the funeral march in its honor: as static as it is intriguing, as tedious as it is dispiriting. Perhaps the slowest I've ever seen - but what am I saying? Motionless, to the point of losing touch with reality and the perception of time; for the most impatient viewers it will be the exact opposite, and glances at the clock will mark the minutes.
It is a silent parade of spectral individuals who wander, cross paths, even brush past each other under the eye of an unwavering camera, without any irony or drama revealed (at least on the surface), without anything resolving into any hoped-for, longed-for human contact. There's an invisible wall between them, between us and them, but above all, there's an even larger wall alienating them from the place they find themselves in: the old Fu-ho theater, where the wuxia classic giving its name to Ming-liang's work is screened for the final night.
The limping woman at the ticket booth eats, cleans, climbs up and down the stairs with difficulty, in fixed shots and off-screen takes that last an eternity. Perhaps she's looking for the projectionist to share her baozi snack with, but it seems like she's chasing after nothing.
A gay guy tries his luck with someone in the audience, but it seems like he doesn't exist.
Some men stand in front of the urinals, statuesque, for about five minutes.
A chick slides effortlessly among the empty seats munching peanuts, probably looking for some prey.
It's a general impasse and no turn of events is contemplated.
After almost 45 minutes of muteness occasionally broken only by scenes from the last screening (the only "living" presence in the entire film resonating in a desolating void), it's said that cinema is haunted by ghosts. But for those who managed to get halfway through the film without falling asleep, it's unfortunately a statement of the obvious: we've already seen them wander a non-path through the cramped corridors and dilapidated storage rooms of that building, indifferent to everything, especially the big screen–the true forgotten protagonist by them and from which Tsai Ming-liang provocatively attempts to distance even us, in a not immediately apparent play of perspectives. Are we becoming those ghosts? Is there no more hope for good old cinema? If this is a tribute to the seventh art, however heartfelt and completely detached from public needs, it's the saddest one imaginable.
Very few films, if any at all, have driven me crazy as this one did: it's so autistic that on more than one occasion, I burst into laughter - but they were only nervous, dictated by exasperation. But then, just when a miracle reveals a glimmer of humanity and hope in the tears of the only gentleman moved by the final scene (and it's even more disheartening that he himself had acted in it in the past), it all ends: the lights illuminate the solitude of the room one last time, the shutters come down, the rain continues to fall, and the now ex-ticket seller leaves, with her awkward gait and half-broken umbrella.
...Or maybe see you again, in better times.
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