Goodbye, Dragon Inn

Directed by: Ming-liang Tsai
2003/Taiwan/35mm/Colour/80mins
Record: Fipresci Prizes at Venice International Film Festival 2003
2003 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival: Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Chinese site)
IMDb: Bu san
My rating: 5.3/10

This film starts at a theater playing famous "Dragon Inn" full with audience 36 years ago. The men with noticeable white hair was watching, too. He is Yo-Hsin Li. You can still see him at any film festival. (And I can see him right now.) I guess the other man besides him without any hair is the director Tsai. The same eyes looking at this satisfied in the back of the curtain. These are eyes of film guys, of directors, and of cold God.

Tsai sais, he wanna film something real, which may full with gray and question without any answer. But you do not treat this film as kind of documentary. This film is never real. It surrender the viscousness of weep.

Let's begins with my first sight of Tsai. I don't watch much of his film in fact. My first sight of Tsai came from his "Talking with God" in last Golden Horse Film Festival. In this short film, you can watch he filming subway without people, dying fishes, etc. He isn't showing what God's looking at. He is talking to God. The short film itself basically is a sacrifice.

You can see the same scene in "Bu san." The woman hard to walk walking all the time; the Japanese always be annoyed when watching movie and be denied when asking love. You can also notice that in some segment the time seems be prolonged interminate. The slowness of slowing step itself retarded then. Just like the punk jelling in the air, calling the true name of "Silence" in the language you can't understand, and lighting the face of "Darkness." He is not only showing how time watching chenging world but also wanting you talking to his God (in fact himself) when gazing the empty scene. "Visit my movies as they were temple or church," Tsai said.

The only 11 dialouge (not 10) in this film start and end suddenly. They are not Paternoster. They are candle of temple admiring the "Dragon Inn" you treat as background.

In my opinion, this is what Tsai is talking and listening.