Prod Co: Homegreen Films Prod: Liang Hung-Chih, Vincent Wang Dir: Tsai Ming-Liang Scr: Tsai Ming-Liang, Hsi Sung Phot: Liao Pen-Jung Ed: Chen Sheng-Chang 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. That is, a decrepit, old picture-house on the outskirts of Taipei, hosting its last ever screening– of King Hu's 1967 sword-fighting classic Dragon Inn– complete, or incomplete, with leaky ceilings, and a thoroughly depleted audience. In 2003, Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang released his masterful ode to the magic of movie theaters, Goodbye, Dragon Inn. Like his quarantine-focused 1998 musical The Hole, which was re-released in virtual cinemas this year, it’s hard to think of a better time to revisit Goodbye, Dragon Inn than at the close of a year that has threatened to destroy the theatergoing experience once and for all. And while watching Goodbye, Dragon Inn’s new 4K restoration on your laptop, instead of gazing up at it on a massive screen in the dark, surrounded by fellow film lovers, feels wrong, the act of doing so also reminds us exactly what we’re missing. The Last Picture Show Goodbye, Dragon Inn feels in some ways like a tapestry of half-recalled memories triggered by the loss of the sort of movie palaces that some of us remember from our younger days, and yes, I’m including myself in that category. I’m old enough now to recall when even local cinemas were huge auditoriums with imposing screens, the majority of which were later subdivided into two or three smaller and altogether less impressive venues that offered more choice, but on a smaller scale. 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. Watching the cashier make her way slowly up the steps of this cathedral of a cinema with its decaying walls and water-stained floors really does have a sense of sad finality to it, with the water that drips steadily through its leaking roof having the metaphoric feel of tears being shed by the venue for its imminent demise.

Tsai’s movie also evokes the feeling of ghosts. During one rare encounter between the Japanese man and another movie goer, the Japanese man is told that the theater is haunted. Because the people watching the movie are constantly changing seats or getting up to go cruise for hook-ups in the bathrooms, the landscape of the theater feels fleeting. You find yourself wondering if the large mass of people you saw populating the seats at the beginning of the film were ever actually there at all. Did you imagine them? Have they all left? And if they have, are those few that remain there by choice or simply because they haunt the place? The atmosphere of the rest of the building does little to help quell these ghost-like feelings. It is a dark building with multiple ceiling leaks. People emerge and disappear into the shadows as easily as if they could walk through walls. And yet, the movie still plays on the screen, a lifeforce for this otherwise dead-end establishment. Though, when Dragon Inn’s final credits roll and the lights come on, the seats are empty leaving you to wonder if anyone had ever really been there at all. But, what if a film didn’t have to be commercial to be enjoyable? It would have been easy, perhaps, for Ming-Liang to produce a documentary about cinema-going, about going to this cinema (the Fu-Ho) in particular, or even to offer his own take on Hu’s wuxiaclassic. Far more impressive is this surrealworld-within-a-world, a world stripped of action and shorn of dialogue, in which time seems to stand still – or limps slowly along, in rhythm with the stilted metronome of the Fu-Ho’s disabled attendant (Chen Hsiang-Chyi), one leg longer than the other, meandering ghost-like through its empty corridors. Befitting a film that mostly takes place inside a movie theater auditorium, there is very little dialogue in Goodbye, Dragon Inn (apart from what is spoken by the characters in the film they are watching, of course). When the Japanese tourist is informed that the theater is haunted, at approximately the halfway mark of the film, I found myself struggling to remember if anyone had spoken out loud before then — I don’t believe they had. Yet because this is a film by Tsai, renowned for his minimalist storytelling and apt use of imagery and ambient sound to convey inner emotion, one doesn’t need words to understand the hunger for human connection at the heart of Goodbye, Dragon Inn — not to mention, at the heart of moviegoing. source: Metrograph Pictures Join the BFI mailing list for regular programme updates. Not yet registered? Create a new account at www.bfi.org.uk/signup The Fu-Ho had already played a part for Tsai in What Time Is It There?, which likewise explored the cinema’s role as a cruising spot – very much an evocation of the theatre’s real-life function. Wrote Tsai: ‘After declining popularity but before closing down [the Fu-Ho] was said to have a few people of the gay community patronize the place... I’m very moved by this. Though it has declined and lost its glitter and you have forgotten about the theater, it still continues a long journey and still welcomes the outsiders of society.’As part of the Tsai Ming-liang: The Deserted film series, we are pleased to be presenting a 35mm screening of the filmmaker’s critically acclaimed Goodbye, Dragon Inn, followed by a discussion and Q&A. From title on down, Goodbye, Dragon Inn, one of the greatest films in the history of cinema, construes itself not as the simple paen to a dying artform as which it is often perceived, but a constellation of complex, aching desires; it is both wholly in keeping with Tsai’s oeuvre and stands starkly apart from it. The timing of the long-awaited restoration now seems almost too on-the-nose, given that theaters across America remain shuttered and spectatorship in its ideal form has temporarily ceased. But Goodbye is above all resolutely present-minded, less concerned with the future of theatergoing than with the material longing and mystery that its inhabitants experience.

Inside a Dying Movie House Filled With Lonely Phantoms". The New York Times. 2004-09-17. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved 2017-08-20.

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A 4K restoration was released on DVD and Blu-ray by Second Run on November 23, 2020, and digitally by Metrograph on December 18, 2020. [2] [3] Reception [ edit ] A final thought. As the cinema in the film closed its doors for the last time I was reminded of a trip I made to the district of Nakano in Tokyo in 2004, where a Japanese friend had booked me into a reasonably priced hotel that was located directly above a basement cinema that specialised in screening older movies. While there, I just had to pay this venue a visit and saw Fukasaku Kinji’s 1966 Hokkaido no Abare-Ryu – without the aid of English subtitles, no less – and was seriously impressed by the whole experience. 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. As I emerged, I remarked to my friend what a wonderful resource this was to have so close to his home, to which he sadly responded, “I know, I love to come here, but not enough other people do nowadays and so it’s closing next month.” This is where the lingering shot at the end of Goodbye, Dragon Inn of the empty auditorium really hit home, acting as it did as a reminder that sometimes you really don’t fully appreciate what you’ve got until it’s gone. sound and vision Goodbye, Dragon Inn is a meditative, impactful farewell to a cinema in Taipei and exerts even more resonance when looked at through the lens of the past year. The film’s final image, a static long shot of the theatre space, now completely empty, invites and encourages an affective response from the audience and asks it to grieve the loss of place. What are we to do if we lose these places and spaces, other than grieve? The magic and profound impact of being able to watch films in a cinema has no limits other than this brute physical reality. It is painfully clear that this situation was not lost on Tsai. Song Hwee Lim writes that this final long shot of the cinema space “challenges us to rethink the relationship among slowness, nostalgia, and cinephilia”, to bear witness to the decay of cinema 9.