Bu san (2003)

User Rating:

6.9/10   

Director:

Ming-liang Tsai

Writer:

Ming-liang Tsai (writer)

Release Date:

21 July 2004 (France)

Genre:

Drama | Comedy

Plot:

On a dark, wet night a historic and regal Chinese cinema sees its final film. Together with a small handful of souls they bid "Goodbye, Dragon Inn."

Plot Keywords:

Rain | Japanese Tourist | Very Little Dialogue | Rice | Old Man

Awards:

10 wins & 9 nominations

Cast

Kang-sheng Lee	...	Hsiao-Kang
Shiang-chyi Chen	...	Ticket Woman
Kiyonobu Mitamura	...	Japanese tourist
Tien Miao	...	Himself
Chun Shih	...	Himself
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Chao-jung Chen
Kuei-Mei Yang	...	Peanut Eating Woman

Also Known As:

Bu jian bu san
Good Bye, Dragon Inn (International: English title)
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (USA) (DVD box title)

Runtime:

82 min | Argentina:84 min (Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente)

Country:

Taiwan

Language:

Mandarin | Taiwanese

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Singapore:PG | Argentina:13

Company:

Homegreen Films

Trivia:

The first line of dialogue appears 40 minutes into the film.

Quotes:

Shih Chun: Teacher Miao. Shih-Chun.
[pause]
Shih Chun: Teacher, you came to see the movie?
Tien Miao: I haven't seen a movie in a long time.
Shih Chun: No one goes to the movies anymore, and no one remembers us anymore.

Movie Connections:

References Gin gwai (2002)

Soundtrack:

Chong Feng

absence

Tsai Ming-liang's "Goodbye Dragon Inn" is a spectacularly dull movie, a limp ode to the bygone days of cinema-going. A film smitten with its own stasis, "Goodbye" culminates in a shot held for an obscene amount of time of an empty movie theater. Tsai's known for holding his shots way past the point most directors yell cut, and the result can be strikingly effective in the right context (the brilliant final shot of "Vive L'Amour") but "Goodbye" is almost an art film parody in its studied minimalism. The money shot in particular is a groan-inducer that makes you long for a fast-forward button.

"Goodbye Dragon Inn" sounds like it ought to appeal: a homage to the glory days of cinema by a great director, but Tsai seems to be resting on the assumption that anything he cranks out these days is destined for acclaim (which is true). However, ever since "The Hole" Tsai's inspiration appears to be running out; what in the earlier films seems innovative comes off as mannered in the later ones. "What Time is it There?" is a good flick but hardly feels like anything new from the filmmaker, "The Skywalk is Gone" is a short-film punchline for "What Time?," and "Goodbye" is just grinding. Tsai's probably incapable of making a thoroughly awful movie and there are spots of greatness in "Goodbye Dragon Inn," but hardly enough to justify a feature-length film. You can almost feel the director yawning behind the camera as he's filming, telling his actress to just continue sitting for an interminable amount of time so he can pad it just a little more (though the movie is only 80 minutes long it feels much, much longer). The director's always threatened to deadend his limited stylistic resources and "Goodbye Dragon Inn" is the wall he's always threatened to hit. I like Tsai and think he has some worthwhile things to say, but he's said the same things over and over again and the point's been made. People these days have trouble connecting, the values of the old days have become buried under the industrial rubble of progress, yes yes. Tsai fixates on the same themes in the same way he fixates on an empty theater or a woman hobbling slowly across the screen. Since there isn't too terribly much variety thematically or stylistically in the his films, familiarity with his past work leads to a feeling of having repeatedly tread the same path. It takes a true master to be able to be as stubbornly dwell on the same ideas in the same manner over the course of a career and pull it off, and Tsai is hardly a Bresson or Ozu. Flashes of brilliance and invention are certainly to be found in Tsai's movies, but "Goodbye" just uses minimalism to mask its lack of substance. Slow movies don't have to be tedious and unrewarding, as a few Tsai Ming-liang films have demonstrated, but often the tendency among art film devotees is to equivocate slow and good. "Goodbye Dragon Inn" isn't very good. The ideas are slight, the homage curiously lacks feeling, and the whole thing just drags along way past the point of interest like Tsai's lead actress down the corridor.