What Time Is It There?

Starring:Kang-sheng Lee, Shiang-chyi Chen, Yi-Ching Lu, Tien Miao, Cecilia Yip, Chao-jung Chen, Guei Tsai, Arthur Nauzyciel, David Ganansia, Jean-Pierre LÃ©aud
Director: Ming-liang Tsai
Studio: Fox Lorber
Product Type: DVD

Description

A quirky comedy about a young man who sells watches in the streets of Taipei. He sells his own watch to a young woman who is leaving for Paris the next day. He is so moved by this encounter that he goes around setting all the clocks in Taipei to Paris time, in order to keep some connection with her.

Customer Reviews:

In my end is my beginning.......2005-04-07

Be warned that there are shots of faces and scenes that are so long and motionless that you will check your DVD player to see if it is on "pause." You are invited to stare-- as you are invited by Bergman to stare at Liv Ullman.
I watched the movie with great impatience at first, whining for a "story." I was in the wrong rooms of my cortex. This is not a movie about actions, but about states. Once you get "the grammar" of the film, there's a flip in your mind and you begin watching in a wholely different way. The film uses you in ways that you have to be receptive to.

The last scenes retro-defined the film for me. The man who fishes the suitcase out of the water should be familiar face to those who watch the film attentively. The closing image of the immense ferris wheel should resonate to those familiar with Buddhist iconography: the wheel of becoming; what a striking image, what a striking film.

Wounding and unforgettable.......2005-03-16

Many have griped of its laconic pace (to put it nicely), but I barely noticed the length of Ming-liang Tsai's elegiac masterpiece - quite the contrary, his concept of "time" is central to the movie. You'll notice there's not a single camera movement in the movie, everything is staged within a particular confined space, and that's because there's not a second of the movie that's not particularly planned out. It tells the story of three characters aching for anything else in their lives, and it does so with unobtrusive observation, a full creation and specification of every nuance of their actions. That makes every action - the restrained ones, the quirky ones, and the sexual ones - a quiet declaration of longing. That is to say the events of the movie are ordinary, for some, too painstakingly ordinary. For those that sign onto its stark stule, though, it'll be an ordinariness that, with nearly silent gestures, moves to the transcendent.

A Fascinating Film for Patient People.......2004-12-09

This movie is unparalleled in its authentic presentation of life, and its incredibly knack for making the everyday experiences of human beings such as boredom, miscommunication, and ridiculous but painful moments of social awkwardness somehow seem fascinating. The key to this is Tsai Ming-Liang's incredible ability to take the most mundane aspects of life and make them seem both absurdly beautiful and beautifully absurd, all accomplished while utilizing an incredibly sparse arsenal of music (none at all until the closing credits, and even that is simply a snippet from The 400 Blows), dialogue (only in a handful of scenes), and plot (not much to speak of, besides an uneventful trip to Paris and a fascination with time zones). As a result, the film is extraordinarily rewarding, but only to those with attention spans long enough to sit through what amounts to 116 minutes of negative space. If you can get through, this is the perfect introduction to Tsai Ming-Liang's work.

Homage to Truffaut lost on this viewer.......2004-08-05

I'm as open as the next person to expanding my cinematic horizons. Case in point: the Korean film '301/302' - distasteful to many, I stomached my way through it (apologies for those bad puns to anyone who has seen that film).

"What Time Is It There?" is a different story. I tried - really tried - to force my way through a complete viewing. Just impossible. I lasted 65 or so seemingly interminable minutes. I see here on these pages that Ming-liang Tsai has crafted an homage to Truffaut's "400 Blows." Honestly, when I'm forced to watch a guy urinate into a bag for two whole minutes (no exaggeration), the last thing I'm thinking about is the subtlety of some guy's homage.

I'll bump this up to two stars because given the other reviews posted here, I can see that a true student of film can discern these elements of Truffaut. I respect that. I just think that this movie is (very emphatically) not going to be everyone's cup of tea.

Disconnection in Melancholic Loneliness - Brilliant!!!.......2004-08-02

Ming-liang Tsai's films are nothing like what most audiences are used to as his films have very little, or almost no, dialogue. This means that the dynamic force of Tsai's films are the images and the scenes that he creates with a meticulous perfection as if each scene could be hanging by itself in the Louvre. Through doing this the audience is compelled to participate cerebrally and try to make there own decisions on what Tsai is trying to say. Even so, Tsai creates a story where each scene is interconnected in a very distinct manner. It should also be mentioned that Tsai has been compared to cinematic geniuses such as Robert Bresson and Jacques Tati.

What Time Is It There? begins with an opening scene where an old man sits in melancholic loneliness next to the kitchen table smoking a cigarette. The scene goes on for a good five minutes as the old man struggles with the inhaling and exhaling of the cigarette before he departs the earthly world. The old man is the main character's father, Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-Sheng), who works as a street vendor selling watches in Taipei, Taiwan. Hsiao-kang is a Buddhist and he believes in reincarnation, which means that he must follow certain guidelines in order to help his father have the best possible reincarnation.

Through Hsiao-kang's work he meets the attractive Shiang-chyi (Chen Shiang-Chyi) who wants to buy his personal watch as she finds it very appealing. At first Hsiao-kang refuses as he is in mourning and it would violate the guidelines of his belief. However, after some thinking Hsiao-kang agrees to sell his watch to Shiang-chyi as she needs it for her trip to Paris, France. It is this moment of the film that launches an emotional journey in the shadow of a spiritual crisis as Hsiao-kang worries about his father's reincarnation. Initially it brings amusement to the audience as Hsiao-kang attempts to set as many watches as he can in Taipei in French time as his watch is currently with Shiang-chyi in France.

Tsai playfully uses the moment of selling the watch to create an astonishing cinematic event that is abundantly rich of subtle humor and simultaneous sadness. This conflict of feelings also brings a homage to François Truffaut's The 400 Blows, which Hsiao-kang buys in order to learn more about France. In addition, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Antoine Doinel in 400 Blows, makes a small cameo in the film where he meets Shiang-chyi on a bench in a graveyard as she is looking for a phone number to someone, assumingly Hsiao-kang. This scene conveys a strong sense of connection between Hsiao-kang and Shiang-chyi, yet the physical disconnection between the two in shape of distance in very real.

What Time Is It There? presents a brilliant cinematic experience that goes far beyond what one can see on the screen. It also offers tribute to cinema itself as it seem to have influenced Tsai in several way. Lastly, it provides much pondering for those who seek a stimulating cinematic experience, which will not be forgotten by those who fully experienced Tsai at his best.

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