Days / Afternoon (Tsai Ming-Liang)
2020 / 2015 Second Run Blu Ray. Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-Liang) 2003 Second Run Blu ray.
“The bargain the newer variety of slow films seem to impose on the viewer is simple: it’s up to you to draw on your stoic patience and the fascination in your gaze, in case you miss a masterpiece.”
Nick James, Sight and Sound April 2010
I have prefaced my review of Tsai Ming-Liang’s Days with Nick James’s quote on slow / meditative cinema because I honestly can’t decide if this Taiwanese film convinces me. My issue is not non-linear cinema but the duration of long takes in slow moving films. Don’t get me wrong. It can be enthralling cinema (love their perfection in the films of Ozu though occasionally irritated by their extreme length in the cinema of Jean Marie-Staub.)
Days, a film about two gay men, in a fleeting relationship, opens up intense issues of the body as an object of joy and suffering, with some shots that are nearly 10 mins in length. One shot of a man cooking, lasting 8 mins, was described by one critic as “immersing us in the rhythm of his everyday expression.” Does it immerse us or is it just boring? As you’ve gathered Days is a film where very little happens. The film is minimalist. Its aesthetic is the inconsequential things of life becoming consequential when the minutiae of the everyday take on meaning. Contained with the intimacy of two men – Kang (played by Lee Kanhg-sheng) and Non (played by Anong Houngheuansy) Days both frustrates and rewards the viewer.
Kang lives alone in a big house. Non lives alone in a modest apartment. Kang travels to the city to receive acupuncture for pains in his neck and head. He makes an appointment to have a massage where Non works. Kang pays Non for the massage and gives him a gift a small music box that plays the theme from Chaplin’s film Limelight. They then have sex and share a meal at a fast food restaurant. More incidents take place but although they are sparse to reveal them would spoil the film’s sad conclusion.
Days is about pain and its toleration and relief centred round two alienated men who give each other brief comfort and relaxation. The texture of the film resides in its quiet, even gentle, stillness. This is beautifully achieved in the music box scene. The sense of giving and receiving of the present and letting the music flow between them as they sit on the bed is both tender and moving. In this intimate exchange, even more than their sex, they try to momentarily connect.
Unlike Chaplin, Tsai Ming-Liang doesn’t intend pathos, yet the scene leaves you with a lingering regret that these men live unfulfilled lives. No back story is ever given nor any subtitles throughout the whole of an almost non-verbal film. It’s the only long take in Days that really works for me: judicious with a kindly gaze on their loneliness that for a brief moment is relieved, almost forgotten. If only more scenes had had this moral authority than my impatience with the film’s prolonged ‘ordinary’ moments, slowly shot to exacerbate their banality, would have made me more emotionally engaged.
Before Days Tsai Ming-Liang made Goodbye Dragon Inn (2003). This also has shots with long takes yet Tsai Ming-Liang’s approach is linear and for me makes for a more engrossing film than Days. This comedy drama concerns an old cinema that’s about to close down. Its final screening is of a 1967 Chinese martial arts film called Dragon Inn. In the gay cruising scenes we observe Chaplinesque body language in action. A young Japanese patron, with a dead pan Keaton face, attempting to chat up men. A disabled ticket woman trying to find the projectionist so as to give him a steamed bun. And a tearful actor from Dragon Inn watching its last outing. It’s also rumoured that ghosts inhabit the cinema.
A mix of dry humour, social observation, stylised encounters in cavernous basement and toilets, shot in a comic confrontational manner, Goodbye Dragon Inn is consistently quirky, funny, affectionate, nostalgic, visually beautiful and here slow pacing really works.
Alan Price©2024.
Days / Afternoon (Tsai Ming-Liang)
2020 / 2015 Second Run Blu Ray. Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-Liang) 2003 Second Run Blu ray.
“The bargain the newer variety of slow films seem to impose on the viewer is simple: it’s up to you to draw on your stoic patience and the fascination in your gaze, in case you miss a masterpiece.”
Nick James, Sight and Sound April 2010
I have prefaced my review of Tsai Ming-Liang’s Days with Nick James’s quote on slow / meditative cinema because I honestly can’t decide if this Taiwanese film convinces me. My issue is not non-linear cinema but the duration of long takes in slow moving films. Don’t get me wrong. It can be enthralling cinema (love their perfection in the films of Ozu though occasionally irritated by their extreme length in the cinema of Jean Marie-Staub.)
Days, a film about two gay men, in a fleeting relationship, opens up intense issues of the body as an object of joy and suffering, with some shots that are nearly 10 mins in length. One shot of a man cooking, lasting 8 mins, was described by one critic as “immersing us in the rhythm of his everyday expression.” Does it immerse us or is it just boring? As you’ve gathered Days is a film where very little happens. The film is minimalist. Its aesthetic is the inconsequential things of life becoming consequential when the minutiae of the everyday take on meaning. Contained with the intimacy of two men – Kang (played by Lee Kanhg-sheng) and Non (played by Anong Houngheuansy) Days both frustrates and rewards the viewer.
Kang lives alone in a big house. Non lives alone in a modest apartment. Kang travels to the city to receive acupuncture for pains in his neck and head. He makes an appointment to have a massage where Non works. Kang pays Non for the massage and gives him a gift a small music box that plays the theme from Chaplin’s film Limelight. They then have sex and share a meal at a fast food restaurant. More incidents take place but although they are sparse to reveal them would spoil the film’s sad conclusion.
Days is about pain and its toleration and relief centred round two alienated men who give each other brief comfort and relaxation. The texture of the film resides in its quiet, even gentle, stillness. This is beautifully achieved in the music box scene. The sense of giving and receiving of the present and letting the music flow between them as they sit on the bed is both tender and moving. In this intimate exchange, even more than their sex, they try to momentarily connect.
Unlike Chaplin, Tsai Ming-Liang doesn’t intend pathos, yet the scene leaves you with a lingering regret that these men live unfulfilled lives. No back story is ever given nor any subtitles throughout the whole of an almost non-verbal film. It’s the only long take in Days that really works for me: judicious with a kindly gaze on their loneliness that for a brief moment is relieved, almost forgotten. If only more scenes had had this moral authority than my impatience with the film’s prolonged ‘ordinary’ moments, slowly shot to exacerbate their banality, would have made me more emotionally engaged.
Before Days Tsai Ming-Liang made Goodbye Dragon Inn (2003). This also has shots with long takes yet Tsai Ming-Liang’s approach is linear and for me makes for a more engrossing film than Days. This comedy drama concerns an old cinema that’s about to close down. Its final screening is of a 1967 Chinese martial arts film called Dragon Inn. In the gay cruising scenes we observe Chaplinesque body language in action. A young Japanese patron, with a dead pan Keaton face, attempting to chat up men. A disabled ticket woman trying to find the projectionist so as to give him a steamed bun. And a tearful actor from Dragon Inn watching its last outing. It’s also rumoured that ghosts inhabit the cinema.
A mix of dry humour, social observation, stylised encounters in cavernous basement and toilets, shot in a comic confrontational manner, Goodbye Dragon Inn is consistently quirky, funny, affectionate, nostalgic, visually beautiful and here slow pacing really works.
Alan Price©2024.
By Alan Price • film, year 2024 • Tags: Alan Price, film