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

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Outside, he meets Miao Tien, who also acted in the film and attended the screening with his grandson. Scott of The New York Times praised the film, writing, " Goodbye, Dragon Inn has a quiet, cumulative magic, whose source is hard to identify. It doesn't tell a story, really, but conveys what it's like to walk along empty city streets on a rainy night, alone. There weren’t many of us in attendance, but the cinema was immaculately kept, the seats were comfortable, the screen was a good size and the condition of the print being screened was close to miraculous.

It’s not hard to see parallels with the cinema of Béla Tarr, another filmmaker who favours lingering on images for far longer than conventional wisdom dictates, a technique that peaked in the seven-hour Sátántangó.Don't worry about spoilers (none here, but don't worry about others'), because not much happens in the movie. Instead she places it quietly in the entrance to the projection booth for him to hopefully find and gratefully consume, then slowly makes her way back to ground level. But then it would no longer be Sátántangó, just as doing likewise to Goodbye, Dragon Inn would effectively rob the film of its identity. A meager audience, the remaining few staff, and perhaps even a ghost or two, watch King Hu’s wuxia classic Dragon Inn—each haunted by memories and desires evoked by cinema itself.

If you watched it and felt nothing but exasperation, as some definitely have, then you’re probably thinking that this would be a good thing. You see, despite a hesitant start, for me watching Goodbye, Dragon Inn proved an increasingly involving and ultimately seductive experience, as I gradually adjusted to Tsai’s approach and the film’s unhurried pace and found myself oddly intrigued by characters about whom I knew little and situations in which little is explicitly stated. And when filmmakers play with traditional form and structure, this can sometimes result in works that make for challenging viewing, precisely because they do not conform to long-established rules and expectations. The very definition of a film that will starkly divide opinion, Goodbye, Dragon Inn is likely to prove frustrating and unsatisfying viewing for some, but if you can adjust to its slow pace and fascination with stillness and small moments, then there’s a good chance it will really work for you.Reminded of the super-cinemas and the poetic King Hu films of his youth, he shot a scene in the theater and premiered the film there. And while it could be argued that while up until the current pandemic put many of them at risk of permanent closure, cinemas in the UK were still attracting sizeable audiences, venues like the one in Goodbye, Dragon Inn (which was shot in a real cinema that was was on the verge of closure) that screen older movies for a specialist audience have become altogether rarer, at least outside of major cities. The movie's point of view is variously that of the young limping woman, the Japanese kid, and the old actors, but ultimately, Tsai tells the story from the theater's point of view, as if he interviewed it Tsai-style, pointing the camera at it and letting the theater speak at its edificial pace. It’s also worth noting that not a lot happens during the course of that running time, at least in terms of on-screen action, and that the first line of dialogue doesn’t occur until just over 40 minutes into the film.

It's as if the theater knows it's done for, resigned to its fate, not yet ready to die, too tired to fight. There is, it turns out, a logical explanation for this (though not for how close the tourist gets to the man, which seems to be played more for comic effect) that is revealed only in the film’s touching final scenes. Lonely souls cruise the aisles for companionship while two actors from Hu’s film watch themselves writ large, perhaps for the last time.Gven how much of the film takes place in the dark, the clarity of the picture and detail is really impressive.