What Time Is it There?
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Movie Reviews of What Time Is it There?
Movie Review: You know what time it is
Summary: 5 Stars
What time is it there is a film which combines sharp dark humor, with an colorful immobile aesthetic to create a film which harmonically resonates like the second hand, on an analog watch, once worn by a lost lover.Movie Review: Lonely people, lonely worlds
Summary: 4 Stars
Tsai Ming Lian's new film "what time is it there" is an interesting watch. Once again he focuses on the lives of lonely people. Main character loses his father and meets a girl who leaves for Paris. He starts to set all the watches he has (he is a watch seller on the street) to the Paris time. Later he is obsessed with setting all the watches big and small to the Paris time, including a building watch.Camera journeys into dark, crowded or stuffy rooms with dirty yellow light. Directors chose of using darkness to present people's loneliness continues with this film in various scenes. After losing a husband, widow mother tries to keep the light out by covering everywhere in the house in order to preserve the husband's soul longer If he wishes to visit her in another form. She always prepare a plate for him, unable to cope with his absence. Main character misses the girl whom he saw twice, and tries to stay close to her by setting the time to Paris, drinking french wine on the top of a building (maybe dreaming eiffel tower) and watching French movies on video. She is also lonely in Paris, and refuses to let people in her life who are also lonely, always thinking someone else, trying to phone to that person but failing every attempt (maybe the watch seller who gave her the number, maybe not)
Film has all these emotions told well by camera, actors and cinephotography . So do not expect much speech between the characters. It is a semi silent film in many senses and story actually does not need conversation. But of course director lighten things up for us, using his sense of humour as showing people on their most humane and defenceless moments like burping. He also uses lots of irony in the religious rituels of mourning.
Tsai Ming Lian's films are not easy nor too energetic. So do not expect Wong Kar Wai or Ang Lee type of work here.You need to sit patiently and enjoy the film as a whole, trying to understand the characters actions.
It may not be an easy film for everyone sometimes but definitely a treat for the appreciators of his work.
Movie Review: Beautiful.
Summary: 4 Stars
Melancholy and sweet and weirdly humorous; our young hero begins the movie in impossibly bleak circumstances... and goes down from there. The end result is almost comedy: "normal" life is mostly hiding out watching the 400 Blows over and over and aimlessly spending days at the worst possible job imaginable. The entire movie slowly, quietly digresses into a more and more eccentric orbit as our hero follows his strange compulsion to reset every clock he sees to Paris time.
If movies were Harry Potter characters, this one would be Luna Lovegood.
Movie Review: Dull in a good way
Summary: 4 Stars
Characters here spend lone minutes frozen, doing nothing and saying nothing, as the camera lingers for long periods. Many shots are from a middle to long distance with the only sound the dull hum of the city for background music. This is a meditation on loneliness. A watch seller obsesses over a customer. The customer visits Paris and seems alone. The mother of the watch seller mourns her late husband. There is comedy and tragedy here. Very slow, but still watchable. Reminded me of a Jim Jarmusch film.Movie Review: Works rather better in the memory than on the screen
Summary: 3 Stars
What Time is it There? is one of those films that works better on paper or in the memory than while you're actually watching it - there's only so much non-communication shot in static camera setups you can take before boredom sets in, and two hours of it gets to be pretty heavy going at times. It's full of quirky and enjoyable touches, and one outstanding scene where the lead character's mother unloads her loss on a pet fish, but it does seem overly compelled to try your patience at times: after all, how many scenes of a guy urinating into bottles or plastic bags do you really need in one movie? Still, there is a great cameo from Jean Pierre Leaud.