The River
by Ming-liang Tsai
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ann Hui, Kang-sheng Lee, Shiang-chyi Chen, Tien Miao, Yi-Ching LuDirector: Ming-liang Tsai
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Mandarin Chinese (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 115 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-02-04
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Fox Lorber
Movie Reviews of The River
Movie Review: Ha ha, wow.
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is an unbelievable masterpiece. Tsai Ming-Liang continues to outdo himself at every turn, creating yet another of the best films since the advent of sound. His quiet but relentless attack on the entire idea of the modern narrative film would do Eisenstein proud. Anyone doubting the supreme genius with which he seeks to confound the cinema illiterate West need only read the other reviews on this page. The fact that one confused reviewer had the unmitigated audacity to trash this film after appointing himself "Enlightened One" had me holding my sides with laughter.
If you are sick of spastic, attention-deficit editing; if you hate being told how to feel about your movie by a ridiculous, invasive orchestra score; if you no longer need to be told how important a scene is by the volume of the actor's voice, Tsai Ming-Liang just might be for you. I am still chuckling to myself as I write this, imagining some clueless art-house hipster adjusting the brightness on his set and trying to figure out how tell what a character is feeling without a close-up of their face.
Good Lord. Imagine what these people would make of Bela Tarr.
Summary of The River
The strange, elliptical movies of Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang (The Hole, What Time Is It There?) defy encapsulation. A description of The River will tell you about a female elevator operator, her pornography-selling lover, and her husband who goes to gay bathhouses. Her unhappy scooter-riding son runs into an actress he knew a few years earlier; she brings him to the set of a movie she's working on, where the young man gets a role as a corpse floating in a river. But none of that amounts to a plot in any conventional sense, and that summary doesn't capture the slow but hypnotic pace of Tsai's movies, or how the seemingly ordinary images will burn themselves into your memory. The lack of conventional action will frustrate some viewers, but others will find deadpan humor and an eerie cinematic poetry. --Bret FetzerArt House & International DVD Video
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