Goodbye, Dragon Inn and the elegiac ruminations on cinematic space, time, and the self
Goodbye, Dragon Inn and the elegiac ruminations on cinematic space, time, and the self
Entrance of the Fu-Ho Grand Theatre, the floors soaking wet from the pouring rain.
Going to the cinemas is very much a paradoxical activity for me (often because I go alone, though it's probably a feeling that can pertain to anyone) – especially when harboring this idea of "cinema-going" as a communal experience. Funnily enough, it feels very much the opposite – a very isolationist experience: we go into a dark room and sit in silence for about 90+ minutes watching the moving lights play tricks on our emotions. However grandiose, engrossing and resonant the picture may be, we all have our reasons on why we're here in the same dark room, simultaneously glued to the film's world, yet unintentionally distant and inattentive to our businesses in the real world. "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" explores a specific relationship between the allure of cinema and its place among the lives of its audience: an audience reminiscent of us as viewers as well as the characters depicted in the film itself.
A film that revolves around the last remaining hours of an old disheveled movie theatre and its patrons before its indefinite closure, its style is considered a part of the slow cinema genre: long takes with sparse diegetic action and almost little to no dialogue. The ascetic combination forms an intriguing and unique perspective of observing time non-mainstream to traditional films. Slow films make us "feel" time. We can tell how much the scene drags on between one activity to the next. This "density" of time shifts our perspective of seeing the filmic world from a more steady, information-driven pace to an intentionally structured tempo dictated by moods and emotions revolving around temporal concepts.
A film built on Paul Schrader's "distancing devices" coined in his seminal "Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer,” we are forced to lean in and accept the slowed down rules of Tsai's world, a world where people drift along the dark and grimy alleys of the old, decrepit movie theatre. For Schrader, this preoccupation highlights "an actual or potential disunity between man and his environment… a growing crack in the dull surface of everyday reality." (2018)
We aren't given the satisfaction of skipping the mundane; instead, we are subject to every minute of the character's actions throughout. We see movie-goers eating pistachios loudly as a child quietly focuses on the film accompanied by his grandfather (who stars in the aforementioned martial arts film "Dragon Inn"). We follow a timid, homosexual Japanese tourist wandering the theatre persuading patrons to light his cigarette, hoping they reciprocate sexually to his advances, a ticket woman with a bad leg painstakingly limping through every room in the theatre to try and find the projectionist. There's also an old man rewatching the film who also stars in the martial arts film, just like the grandfather, crying as he relives his past memories on-screen.
Everyone and everything abides by the persistent feeling of "dead time,” a certain emptiness of the atmosphere that feels hypnotising yet liminal. The film never leaves the theatre setting, very much bound by these closed-off rules with no other contexts concerning the characters to take in outside of the theatre environment. We only ever see the theatre's exterior in the final shot, with rain pouring down hard as the ticket woman returns home. Disunity and dullness are concerned in so far as the film’s painstaking stillness forces its viewers to be both hyper-aware and dissatisfied by spaces subservient to unrelenting monotony of time.
Wide angle of the empty theatre, having just finished playing its final movie as the ticket woman sweeps the floor.
There's a specific shot near the end of the film where Dragon Inn has finished playing, and we see a wide-angle of the now empty theatre. The lights go up, the ticket woman enters to languidly clean the seats, then exits the frame. Virtually nothing happens or appears on-screen for about a solid five minutes following the already slow activity. We can only hear the faint sounds of the ticket woman's footsteps slowly fading away. At this moment, there is only emptiness. The theatre, now uninhabited, exists at that moment, yet no longer ceases to exist. For as many cinema patrons it has housed over its longevity, it feels unfamiliar, enigmatic in its atmosphere as if the theatre no longer becomes a "theatre," but rather a ghost of its own past. This contradictory "non-space" - the discord between the individual and their environs - becomes a mirror shining back at the audience, forcing us to confront our collective and individual roles as spectators.
As much as I'd like to admit that films in and of themselves can be considered the only source of emotional affective whenever I go out to watch a movie in theatres, the retrospective reflection of the experience is just as compelling. Why do I choose to watch this specific film from the 60s in theatres when I can pirate it online? Why do I sometimes feel detached, watching movies? Am I giving films the attention they deserve to fully understand them? Is it my fault or the film's fault? Was there something bothering me before I left the house? Why do I also feel so impatient when I watch movies? Am I waiting for something to happen? Or is it something affecting me outside the theatre? Why do I feel empty?
Goodbye, Dragon Inn neglects the concept of the "shared experience through film" in favour of focusing on the act of movie-going itself. It depicts the "communal experience" as one removed of emotional resonance from the film being screened in front of us, but rather in the phenomenological action of partaking in the medium. We're not necessarily supposed to pay attention to the film being played in the background. It instead orients our attention to the act of being present in the first place.
"Did you know this theatre is haunted?", says the man (right) to the Japanese tourist (left).
A slowness of perceived time allows for much broader introspection by the audience, and Tsai Ming-Liang channels these differing emotions through its characters. Slowness alone creates a sense of boredom or frustration, a longing for a sense of certainty or "return" of the film to a more conventional route. Simultaneously, one's submission and acceptance of the film's world also creates a hypnotic and transcendent atmosphere for the viewer, where characters on-screen feel ephemeral, unobtrusively moving through space and time. The limited diegetic action by the characters too generate this sense of hopelessness and aimlessness, a common theme in almost every entry in Tsai’s oeuvre - revolving around the idea of urban alienation a la late-stage capitalism that obliterates virtually every possibility for any meaningful and intimate human connection (Rebels of the Neon God, Vive L'Amour, The Hole, Days). Loneliness pervades the movie-going experience, despite how many people are packed in the same room.
In that sense, we begin to question and ponder the role of cinema in the broader scheme of the characters that inhabit it and in our own lives separate from the theatre. Am I like the Japanese tourist, hoping that I would achieve some form of emotional intimacy by being around strangers, assured that my interest in film is validated by the mere fact that others believe the same way? Or is cinema a form of solace, a refuge from the hustle and bustle of everyday living? Life is already complex and ambiguous, and feeling anything other than exhaustion becomes the only certainty. Or is all of this meaningless, a mere distraction to avoid facing our hang-ups? Is "appreciating the wondrous spectrum of the human condition on celluloid" a convoluted excuse to rid oneself of the guilt that their own relationships are not as exciting nor worth the effort to pursue? Or is the purpose of cinema to bring consciousness of our most deep-seated emotions to prepare ourselves from such troubles?
Exterior shot of the theatre with the ticket lady slowly walking home as the rain continues.
The movie theatre is haunted by ghosts of the past, yet they are relived and celebrated through film. Despite how many different types of explosions, melodrama, and catharsis we can stomach observing the silver screen, the only constant is us. The theatre may close, but our thirst for cinema remains. No matter the series of events that led us together in the same dark room being enamored by the stars in front of us, we are connected yet distant from each other. Though we may drift in and out of the theatre, we remain static in this space that exists in its own temporal and spatial plane. Time feels slow because it is. We cry because we remember it's over. Cinema haunts us the same way we haunt theatres. We're just a bunch of lonely ghosts together in a room, watching ourselves come to life.
Born in Manila and raised in Antipolo up until his middling teens, Trevor moved to New Zealand 4 years ago where he resides today. He is currently studying an undergraduate degree majoring in film at the University of Auckland. He's also attended a few workshops on TV and film production out and about Auckland, but he enjoys the writing aspect of cinema too. He has yet to write a legitimate piece for a publication instead of making post-ironic joke reviews on Letterboxd.
References:
Schrader, Paul. Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. United States, University of California Press, 2018.
