Goodbye, Dragon Inn [Blu-ray] [2020]

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This is generally me quietly reminding readers that what I have to say is just a personal opinion on a product of a medium in which all works are judged in that court, whatever claims might be made to the contrary. Then there’s the editing, which doesn’t so much break with convention as completely disregard it and make up rules of its own. The King is now a megachurch, the Coliseum is a Banana Republic, and the UA is dust, with the marquee sign marking its grave.

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 moving, deliberately slow paean to the faded splendor of old movie-palaces captures so much of what we love (and love to hate! Central to this approach is a young male Japanese tourist (Kiyonobu Mitamura) whose actions and observations weave a connecting tread to some of the other patrons at this poorly attended swansong screening. 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. You see, despite a hesitant start, for me watching Goodbye, Dragon Inn proved an increasingly involving and ultimately seductive experience, as I gradually adjusted to Tsai’s approach and the film’s unhurried pace and found myself oddly intrigued by characters about whom I knew little and situations in which little is explicitly stated.A meagre audience, the remaining few staff, and perhaps even a ghost or two, watch King Hu's wuxia classic Dragon Inn - each haunted by memories and desires evoked by cinema itself.

This gives rise to an amusingly peculiar moment when the tourist, after repeatedly glancing at a middle-aged man a couple of rows down, moves and sits next to him, then turns to curiously scrutinise his face, an oddly rude inspection that the man elects to ignore until the tourist gives up and departs.The movie's point of view is variously that of the young limping woman, the Japanese kid, and the old actors, but ultimately, Tsai tells the story from the theater's point of view, as if he interviewed it Tsai-style, pointing the camera at it and letting the theater speak at its edificial pace. The film runs for 82 minutes, yet I have a feeling that if the footage was handed to most editors to assemble without guidance from the director then the length would be shortened by about two-thirds. I have a feeling that the most commonly used phrase in my reviews of films that do not conform to the mainstream norm is “it won’t work for everyone. When the woman approaches the ticket office, for instance, the angle chosen suggests the ticket seller was not in on the gag and was thus expected not to sell the woman a ticket because she is just short of the required fare, but when seller is encouraged by others to accept this lower payment she agrees, and a reason for declining this offer then has to be quickly manufactured, or at least that’s the way it seems. If you’re looking for a Taiwanese take on The Last Picture Show, however, you’ve come to the wrong film, as while there are indeed multiple characters to keep tabs on here, this is no coming-of-age story and there aren’t any real character arcs of note.

As in other Tsai movies, the colors are rich, and even the starkest images are carefully composed, allowing the film to convey the full depth of feelings. Nostalgia for the cinemagoing days of my youth certainly played its part here, but if the film also works for you then the quality of the restoration and transfer and the Tsai Ming-Laing interview make this Second Run Blu-ray an easy recommend.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. Goodbye, Dragon Inn ( Chinese: 不散) is a 2003 Taiwanese comedy-drama slow cinema film written and directed by Tsai Ming-liang about a movie theater about to close down and its final screening of the 1967 wuxia film Dragon Inn. Many loved the old moviehouses in their grand glory days, but in "Goodbye Dragon Inn," Tsai shows the beauty of the big theaters as their curtains slowly fall.