Goodbye, Dragon Inn

Starring:Kang-sheng Lee, Shiang-chyi Chen, Kiyonobu Mitamura, Tien Miao, Shih Chun, Kuei-Mei Yang, Chao-jung Chen
Director: Ming-liang Tsai
Studio: Fox Lorber
Product Type: DVD

Description

A Japanese tourist takes refuge inside a run-down movie theater and discovers that some of its patrons may actually be ghosts from the film playing on screen. From Tsai Ming-Liang, director of The River and What Time Is It There?.

Customer Reviews:

another pretentious, bored-you-to-death film from the same director.......2007-06-21

what a torture to watch this deadbeat film. every frame in this movie was just like a picture frozen in time. the screenplay writer/director tried so hard to waste the film as long as they could. they tried to give you a helpless, dreary, melancholy, nostalgic backward of the old time, used a movie they thought representing the golden era of taiwanese wu-xia movies. what we got here were nothing but: the constantly coming and going audience in the theatre, a guy shifted around among seats to look at other viewers who were actually those characters in that movie, all the has-been and the have-been wash-up old timer. what we got here was the camera shot an object or a meaningless character, froze there, shot at them with nothing to tell and nothing to happen; we got the crippled mama-san eating bum, drinking tea, climbing up and down staircases in the theatre doing the meaningless chores, washing her hands in the movie theater's restroom for at least 3 minutes with nothing to tell, then limping around. then back in the showing room, people coming and going, eating, smoking, putting stinking barefeet onto the front seat back, endless guys moving around in the dark, sound track from the screen.....yeah, very deep, very philosophic, got lot things to tell and certainly you understood them all.
this director from taiwan is one of the worst and the most pretentious director who could do nothing but continuously produced absolutely clueless and pointless movies. the only thing he might have achieved was the film manufacturers rally like this customer, because every time he shot a movie, miles of miles film would be bought to fulfill his empty vanity.
strongly recommeded to avoid this movie and all the movies thoughtfully directed by him.

What is wrong with this movie?.......2006-08-27

Okay. I'll make this short. This movie sucks, big time. I'd rather watch a Sound of thunder 100 times in a row. At least that movie has a plot. Be warned! My family and I left after bearing through the first hour. I'm suprised we lasted that long.

Best watched on fastforward.......2006-07-17

This one makes 'Last year in Marienbad' look like an Indiana Jones adventure... A perfect waste of time. "Boring" does not even begin to describe it.

The most boring film ever made.......2006-06-28

I have written this to cathartize the feelings of annoyance I had that I even bothered to watch a single scene of this movie.
And I am no philistine, I love many art house movies.
If you liked "Watching paint dry" you will like this film.
One tip if you make the mistake of getting this out of your local library, let alone the appalling gaffe of buying it: watch it at 4x or 8x speed, then you will get the whole picture with less time wasted. Watch a few snatches at normal speed (eg one of the many scenes of the managaress limping painfully down long corridors, or men peeing for so long they must have advanced prostatitis) and you will be able to tell anecdotes about how you watched the most boring film of all time.
I suppose the director and the "emperors' new clothes" critics who raved on the cover thought this was a clever way of showing how dreary real life is really like. Maybe life is like that for film critics.
However, I really don't think it is that dreary for more than 0.1% of the human race, most of whom would be living in mental hospitals suffering from terminal depression, just waiting for that chance to steal a hospital dinner knife and end the torturous bordeom of it all.

A Movie-going Experience about, among Other Things, the Movie-going Experience.......2006-01-05

Tsai Ming-liang's follow-up to his breakthrough film, "What Time is It There?" is an absorbing visual poem about the pros and cons of going to the movies. While it is less expansive than his previous outing, it clearly belongs alongside the director's other films. Like the rest, it features lonely characters in an urban setting, as well as long, static shots.

"Good Bye, Dragon Inn" takes place in an old-fashioned movie house, which has one screen, shows revivals of classics, and suffers from a lack of customers. The Fu-Ho Grand Theater, as it is called, doesn't quite live up to its namesake anymore. Much of the interior seems dilapidated, and the overall mood approaches sadness.

The movie alternates between a ticket woman with a bad leg (Shiang-chyi Chen), who seems to be the only employee of this vast theatre, and a young man (Kiyonobu Mitamura) who has come to enjoy King Hu's martial arts epic "Dragon Inn." She happens to be away from the booth when he wanders in, so he sneaks into the theater sans ticket. The two characters remain on separate paths: she performs her nightly routine, while he attempts to enjoy "Dragon Inn." Through the course of the film, they never connect with each other. Nor anybody else, for that matter.

Practically half the movie is spent showing the ticket woman hobbling to her locker, a Herculian task given the Fu-Ho's size. Often, the director will let the camera linger until the character retreats from the frame completely. This technique slows down the rhythm of the editing, which affects the speed at which the audience perceives events. But it also emphasizes the solitude of the character, since she remains the sole subject of Ming-liang's interminable shots.

In the case of the young man, the extended takes capture his growing frustration. He does not enter the Fu-Ho Grand looking to be an island onto himself. But petty annoyances, stretched out over the course of long, uninterrupted shots, go a long way towards alienating him from his fellow movie-goers. He hops from seat to seat, but everywhere he goes, he encounters couples who make loud snacking noises, or sneakers next to his head. Occasionally, his interest is piqued by a fellow patron. Unfortunately, his friendly approach often meets a cold shoulder.

The youth never acheives any kind of connection with anyone. There are men who cruise the Fu-Ho looking for dispassionate sex, but it's dispassionate to the point of being invisible. In one scene, which takes place in the men's room, he never realizes sexual congress has been happening in a nearby stall until the surprise appearance of the second participant. The joke is how subdued, how unimpressively muted, both parties must have been to accomplish such stealthy relations.

Somehow, the youth locates a hidden labyrinth, frequented by men who wear yearnful looks. They wander through shadowy passageways, eyeing one another, squeezing against each other in narrow spots. These shots depict friction without actual heat. The youth's standards, being higher than some, explain why he holds out until meeting someone who tickles his fancy. He approaches a boyishly-handsome stranger in a blue button-up (Kang-sheng Lee, a Ming-liang regular since 1992's "Rebels of the Neon God"). But despite early indications, this one isn't interested either. Once again, instead of hooking up, the young man finds himself left high and dry.

The way the director handles it, however, proves strangely amusing. He waits until the moment both characters appear most intimate-the stranger having ignited the youth's cigarette, as well as his libido. When the former leans in as if to kiss the stranger, the latter nonchalantly states the theater is haunted, then walks away. One suspects that the youth has just encountered a ghost himself, but he is too busy being sexually frustrated to heed the message.

Could the Fu-Ho really be haunted, or was the stranger simply messing with the young man's mind? Several scenes imply the former, such as the ghostly young woman who makes eating sunflower seeds seem like Chinese water torture. There is also the appearance of two actors from the film "Dragon Inn": Shih Chun and Tien Miao (another veteran of Ming-liang's films). They mourn how no one goes to see movies anymore, and how the images of their younger selves have faded from the public mind. In either scenario, these characters could be people off the street, or they could indeed be spectres. Ming-liang never states anything explicitly.

Personally, I much prefer the ambiguity. The suggestion of ghosts completely changes our perception of shots at the beginning of the film. Remember those opening images: Countless heads staring forward at the projection against the movie screen. In later shots, what happened to those extras? Were they ever really there, or could Ming-liang have been implying something more mystical, that human beings leave part of themselves behind, even when they go to the movies?

Upon looking back, I wondered whether the ticket woman, who never interacts with anyone, could have been a ghost. Perhaps she is cursed to haunt the corridors of the Fu-Ho, a Sisyphus-like spirit who sweeps floors instead of rolling boulders. More likely, however, she's a real person, whose condition restricts her to menial labor. But working at the cinema allows her certain privileges: There is that wonderful moment when she walks behind the theater screen, and stares up at the giant image of a warrior woman from "Dragon Inn." The camera cuts back-and-forth between her and the female fighter, as lights from the silver screen play off her face. Not only does this moment perfectly capture the liberating power of the cinema, it offers insight into the ticket woman. We realize that, in spite of the difficult working conditions, she might have chosen to be here all along, in exchange for moments like this one.

"Good Bye, Dragon Inn," is noteworthy enough for being filmed in the director's signature style. It's also set in an interesting place, and has something to say about movie-going experience. In addition, everything that happens to the youth while he tries to watch "Dragon Inn" adds up to a humorous assemblage of common moviegoer complaints.

Above all, the movie takes place in a theater, which Ming-liang turns into a microcosm of big city problems. The Fu-Ho itself is an historical edifice left to rot, and contains episodes about personal space (the "noise pollution" from the snack-eaters in the viewing room) as well as social alienation (the lonely ticket woman, the silent men in the labyrinth). There is also a crime issue, as deviant behavior has creeped into a place that welcomes young children (the bathroom liaisons, the gay men cruising the labyrinth).

What caused this downward spiral? Is the decline of the Fu-Ho Grand Theater predicated by the same factors that have affected the movie-showing business in America? Too much piracy? Too many entertainment alternatives? Has their industrialized culture broken too many communities into disparate islands onto themselves, for whom the thought of sharing space, time, and experience seems unbearable?

Average customer rating:

Typical Tsai, and that's never a bad thing
Unique unusual concept film

Goodbye, Dragon Inn

Manufacturer: Catalyst Logic
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Customer Reviews:

Typical Tsai, and that's never a bad thing.......2004-10-25

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.

Unique unusual concept film.......2004-10-08

Though devoid of what would conventionally be termed emotional resonance, Tsai Ming-liang's Goodbye, Dragon Inn is a unique film that stays with the viewer long after the closing song. Tsai here, in a clever psychological twist, equates the past with action and the present with inaction.

While the sparse members of the audience view the classic Chinese martial arts film Dragon Inn, from 1960, the old, vast theater in which they sit, wander about, crack sunflower seeds, and endlessly smoke cigarettes, is really the receptacle for their entrance to the past, full of swordplay, bravado, and high emotion. But as viewers, hangers on, drifters, casual strollers, smokers, and even the projectionist and the theater manager, they are stuck inside their own contemporary mode of existence that results only in what could here be called "static motion".

Every time the camera is on the audience in the theater, we see a slightly different duo or trio of people. One scene to the next provides shifts in the makeup of the audience, but we rarely see them move away; they're just there or not there. Meanwhile on the screen, warriors jump, slash, scream, and go through all manner of activity. In one telling scene--one of the only two in which there is any dialogue not part of the 1960 film itself--one character says to another, "Did you know this theater is haunted?" The character to whom he speaks, a young man, is one who in this and two other scenes leans perilously close to another character, and the latter seems not to mind, or even not to know the young man is there. This "leaning character", the young man, feels like the ghost to which the questioner refers. Yet in another scene, the young man is himself haunted by a voluptuous young woman constantly cracking seeds with her teeth, and moves away.

The only other dialogue not from the 1960 film in the theater occurs after the film is over when two old men, both of whom were in the audience, talk briefly to each other just outside the theater. One comments to the other that he misses the past and that no one knows who they are any more. Too true.

Full of long static scenes--in a bizarre one, three young men relieve thmselves at urinals for a completely non-credible length of time--Goodbye, Dragon Inn is a film whose title really means, Goodbye, Past. This is really a film about time, about aging. We go to the films, Tsai seems to say, to forget our static present and live in the past which is more active than our own lives. Any film we see, contemporary or not, is part of the past; any experience we have is momentary, instantly becoming the past. And as each experience occurs, we age.

A truly different film, Goodbye, Dragon Inn should be seen to give us a view of how we live our lives vicariously through the cinema--how the cinema is, Tsai says, far more than entertainiment, but a vehicle for us to remember, or try to remember, what we only vaguely know now--or maybe don't even know anymore.

Highly recommended.

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