Goodbye, Dragon Inn
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Movie Reviews of Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Movie Review: A wonderful film that can test your endurance yet greatly rewards the patient and observant.
Summary: 5 Stars
I will admit that this film is not for everyone. This is a VERY slow film, there is very little talking, and many shots that linger on what seem at first to be insignificant things. Yes there is no overall plot beyond "the last operating night of a movie theater", but there are many other stories being told within that basic framework. If you actually pay attention to what the film is showing you, you start to see the stories of the people and the place unfold. You start to understand what their lives are, and what the life of the theater is and has been over the years. The place is something more than what it was meant to be. The people are doing more than what they seem to be, or would be expected to be doing in such a place. Today we are so used to listening to a film, and we forget about watching it. Seeing what is happening in the film rather than following the story through what is said in the film. We are so used to having everything laid out for us on a golden platter that we forget about paying attention. We forget how fulfilling it can be to suddenly put two and two together and realize what we are actually seeing, and what it means to everything else we have seen. Silent films, in a much broader and more obvious way forced you to understand the story based on what you saw on screen visually. If you've seen enough silent films you know that the dialog cards were actually often used very sparingly. Entire portions of the dialog would be delivered on screen with only the actors performances revealing what was being said. This film is very much like that only much more subtle, and without even the silent dialog to inform the viewer. You see these events and have to pay close attention and remember things for it to become clear why you are being shown it. But if you have any sort of patience in the end it pays off, and it feels like you have gotten something more meaningful out of this film than just a straight forward happy little story about a once beloved place. You understand the sadness and emptiness that permeates the place and the people in it. It is a very powerful film for anyone with the patience and sense of wonder to actually follow the stories as they slowly and silently unfold.Movie Review: The first Tsai film I saw is still high on the list
Summary: 5 Stars
Perhaps Tsai's lightest and most thematically distilled NYFF-Goodbye Dragon Innand minimalist film to date, Goodbye Dragon Inn pares the dialogue to two brief exchanges that reflect the film's pervasive sentiment of disconnection: the first, with a displaced Japanese tourist (Kiyonobu Mitamura) cursorily on the lookout for opportunities for an anonymous sexual encounter in the dilapidated, near empty movie palace that is playing King Hu's classic martial arts film, Dragon Gate Inn, and the second, featuring the original Hu actors Tien Miao and Jun Shi, now middle-aged, as they meet by chance after the film's conclusion. Intimations of ghosts inhabiting the theater are physically reflected in the isolated souls of a beautiful ticket booth operator and bathroom attendant (Chen Shiang-chyi) - seemingly trapped in a dead-end job by her physical disability - and a projectionist (Lee Kang-sheng), who perform the empty motions of their tasks in a solemn, silent ritual of their seeming existential limbo. Elegantly filmed in rich, vibrant colors against the darkness of the desolate theater and infused with Tsai's idiosyncratically understated, deadpan humor, Goodbye Dragon Inn is a poetic and elegiac exposition on longing, synchronicity, nostalgia, and the death of cinema.Movie Review: five stars
Summary: 5 Stars
The premise of the movie is: zombies wandering around aimlessly at night in a movie theater in Taipei. The theater is analogous to life and the zombies are analogous to the people. This is a typical theme which Tsai likes to explore in his films.
There are maybe five lines in the film, one of which I remember was something like, "Sorry I am Japanese". The movie playing inside the theater is set in dynastic China. I also remember a scene in a washroom where three men stood at a toilet smoking at the same time for around ten minutes, supposedly pissing the whole time.
Bottom line: the movie is depressing as hell. DO NOT see it with a girl hoping to get laid after the movie! THIS IS NOT A DATE MOVIE!!! I can't emphasise that ENOUGH! And certainly do NOT see it if you're already depressed. There is also a bonus short film on the DVD. The same applies to that flm, too.
Movie Review: Hello, dragon awesomeness!
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie is an excercise in patience. Similar to the "eating five pancakes the size of car tires" excercise, it can be painful at times, but in the end completely rewarding. Awesomeness is off the charts (the high end of the charts, which is the good end).Movie Review: Typical Tsai, and that's never a bad thing
Summary: 4 Stars
In Tsai Ming-liang's Goodbye, Dragon Inn, he says goodbye to Taiwan's old way of life with King Hu's seminal Dragon Inn unspooling in the background. It's really hard to review it as there isn't much of a plot to speak of, and the first line of dialogue is not even uttered until half way into this 82 minutes film. For the most of the film, characters just navigate the labyrinth-like theater in search of companionship that never materializes, which probably infers to the presistent alienation in our modern world. Tsai's usual theme of water returns here too, and his reputation as the world's greatest restroom director (by one critic) is also reinforced. Tsai's original intent was to make a short film, but later decided to expand it into a near full length feature. That decision might explain the film's lack of concrete material, as scene after scene the camera just lingers for minutes at a stretch without anything happening on screen. Then again, that self-indulgent style is exactly Tsai's hallmark ever since his first film. I am not exactly complaining though, even if I prefer a slightly faster pace and more meat to the story. Still, your patience will be rewarded by an outstanding final that's pure melancholic poetry, proving once again he is the master at constructing the romance of loneliness and alienation. BTW, the film has cameos of two original actors from Dragon Inn.