I travelled to Berlin only to see this. Tsai Ming-liang’s cinema has given so much to me that I thought it only fair to give something back. I was pressed by the desire to finally, for the first time, see one of his films on the big screen, and motivated by the confidence that none of his previous works had disappointed me. I was not expecting disappointment, but I was also not expecting this.

Funnily enough, despite the fact that Tsai is my favourite director, I don’t think that I have ever cried during one of his films. They often touched upon my deepest emotions, but never pressured me to externalise them. They always inspired self-reflection, but never to the…

A plumber drills a hole between the basement of one apartment and the ceiling of another as a strange disease that causes people to act like cockroaches sweeps over Taiwan at the turn of the millennium. A depressed homeless man, desperate to provide for his family but invisible to the people who drive past his roadside advertising sign, violently mauls the cabbage that his young daughter has adopted as a friend. A Taipei cinema screens King Hu’s “Dragon Inn” during a torrential downpour on its final night in business as various patrons shuffle around inside the theater, each of them looking for a connection that seems to be flickering away forever before our eyes.

While Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang has…

Having revisited Chaplin's Limelight a few days ago, I was intrigued to hear that film's theme music in Tsai Ming-liang's latest - from a music box that Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) gives to his masseur, Non (Anong Houngheuangsy). I can see why Tsai feels kinship with Limelight - another example of a filmmaker stripping his style to the bone, and a film that depicts human connection as a fragile, transient thing that can offer at least temporary relief from the despair of life.

Of course Tsai, unlike Chaplin, doesn't go for heavy music and broad acting (this one is minimal even for him), but this film does stir very deep emotions. The problem with most art/culture industries (in North America, at…

Truly an unexpectedly cathartic and almost transcendent experience. 
日子, the original title, literally translates into “days”, but its deeper meaning is much more unfathomable. it’s life, or the day-to-day routine that comes with as many hardships and challenges as joys. There’s something monotonous in the word itself, and it’s the monotony and repetitiveness that tsai ming-liang channels so beautifully in days. 

The static opening scene, shot through a window and showing one of the main characters sitting in a chair while being surrounded by rain, lasts multiple minutes and is the first of many equally long, motionless and reflective shots. shots that, due to their length and quiescence, force us to take in every detail and reflect on whatever is on screen,…

the first hour really feels less like a film & more like you’re watching this stream where you can click different images, and watch what is unfolding in that corner of the world, in a certain room or on a certain street. but slowly, things take shape and you see patterns, and you grow to understand these people you’re watching.

one is always being cared for, and there is a stillness to everything he does. you get a feeling that he is trying to heal a pain that most likely exists internally. the other is in motion, and is grounded in his routines. he prepares a meal so meticulously, but by habit, and you wonder if he is putting this much…

Of loneliness. A busy city that is endlessly flowing with people. Noises are perpetual but words are scarce enough to the point of facing extinction. The sound of pouring rain, of traffic, of bathing, of cutting vegetables, of making food and making love, of a music box.

Buying love. Sharing the sort of intimacy that cannot be put into words, but seeing it come to a close in a matter of hours. Temporariness is inevitable, yet clinging on to fleeting moments of love and affection is all you can do. You pay them, you talk to them, you give them a gift. They thank you; you are lonely enough to eat out with them.

And then you part. He becomes…