Goodbye, Dragon Inn [Blu-ray] [2020]

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During the last 90 minutes of a screening of Dragon Inn at an old Taipei cinema about to close down, the hobbled ticket woman tries to find the projectionist to give him a steamed bun. Lonely souls cruise the aisles for companionship while two actors from Hu’s film watch themselves writ large, perhaps for the last time.

This is where the lingering shot at the end of Goodbye, Dragon Inn of the empty auditorium really hit home, acting as it did as a reminder that sometimes you really don’t fully appreciate what you’ve got until it’s gone.This gives rise to an amusingly peculiar moment when the tourist, after repeatedly glancing at a middle-aged man a couple of rows down, moves and sits next to him, then turns to curiously scrutinise his face, an oddly rude inspection that the man elects to ignore until the tourist gives up and departs. And when I do connect with such a film on any level, I know it’s going to be a tough sell to what a sizeable portion of even our readership. Central to this approach is a young male Japanese tourist (Kiyonobu Mitamura) whose actions and observations weave a connecting tread to some of the other patrons at this poorly attended swansong screening.

It doesn't tell a story, really, but conveys what it's like to walk along empty city streets on a rainy night, alone. I’ve no doubt that an argument has been made that if that film was re-edited to bring the shot length down to a functional norm then it would probably run for only a couple of hours. Slarek becomes absorbed by the film's lingering focus on suggestion and small character details and salutes the quality of Second Run's recent Blu-ray release. Tsai talks about the genesis of the project, the real-life cinema that both inspired the film and became the location in which it was shot, his childhood of cinema-going and first exposure to the films of King Hu, the film’s cinematography and sound design, the Japanese fan of his work who ended up playing the young tourist in this film, how he revised Chen Hsiang-Chyi’s interpretation of her role at the cashier, and a good deal more. Then there’s the editing, which doesn’t so much break with convention as completely disregard it and make up rules of its own.MetrographPics will be releasing the new 4K restoration of GOODBYE, DRAGON INN digitally starting 12/18. When the woman approaches the ticket office, for instance, the angle chosen suggests the ticket seller was not in on the gag and was thus expected not to sell the woman a ticket because she is just short of the required fare, but when seller is encouraged by others to accept this lower payment she agrees, and a reason for declining this offer then has to be quickly manufactured, or at least that’s the way it seems. That doesn’t mean I’ll like them, but I’ll certainly give the filmmaker credit for trying something that others might not even have considered.

He reveals that he set out to make a work of slow cinema and that it knowingly explores the concept of ‘the gaze’. The community that has outgrown the old Fu Ho cinema seems to tell its patrons, its employees, and even the building itself that all of them really ought to be somewhere else. As we watch the cashier, her right leg supported by a metal brace, slowly limp her way in real time down long corridors and up stairways into what almost feels like the top of the world in the hope of being noticed by a man who seems barely aware of her existence, the impact of her handicap on her work and her personal life really hit home. The movies that played there live on in DVDs and shoebox megaplexes, but their days of playing in grand auditoria to great audiences are largely gone.Anyone who had a special place for movies, especially if it's gone, will be able to see that theater in the Fu Ho. Many loved the old moviehouses in their grand glory days, but in "Goodbye Dragon Inn," Tsai shows the beauty of the big theaters as their curtains slowly fall. The film runs for 82 minutes, yet I have a feeling that if the footage was handed to most editors to assemble without guidance from the director then the length would be shortened by about two-thirds.

Why, I wondered on occasion, is this image being held on for this length, past when it has not only done its job but underscored it multiple times? Watching the cashier make her way slowly up the steps of this cathedral of a cinema with its decaying walls and water-stained floors really does have a sense of sad finality to it, with the water that drips steadily through its leaking roof having the metaphoric feel of tears being shed by the venue for its imminent demise. If you’re looking for a Taiwanese take on The Last Picture Show, however, you’ve come to the wrong film, as while there are indeed multiple characters to keep tabs on here, this is no coming-of-age story and there aren’t any real character arcs of note. And while I’m still not sure about the length of some of those long-held shots, I also warmed to the idea that there was a very real purpose to many of them. When reviewers claim that this film is great and this one is terrible, what they’re actually saying is that they loved this one but hated that one.

In essence, Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang’s 2003 feature, Goodbye, Dragon Inn, is a record of the final screening at a large but run-down Taipei cinema before it permanently shuts its doors. In this wide-ranging and elegiac essay, Nick Pinkerton reflects upon Tsai Ming-liang’s 2003 film Goodbye, Dragon Inn, a modern classic haunted by the ghosts and portents of a culture in flux. A Japanese tourist seeks a homosexual encounter; Chen Chao-jung brushes off his advance and tells him the place is haunted.