There are generally two extremes in filmmaking. One extreme is propaganda, where an audience is told what to think and feel. This is usually achieved with fast cuts, music, and special effects designed to keep an audience from thinking or feeling on their own. The audience is denied subjectivity and is required to view the work from the standpoint of the groupthink. The other extreme is experimental, where the audience is told nothing about how to feel or think but must find their way through their own subjectivities and perspectives. This is usually accomplished with silences, long shots, and subtle acting. Each audience member has a different background and will therefore view the film differently. Moderation is often the key here, and while filmmakers will want you to feel or think a certain way, they will often make you work to understand it for yourself, thereby making the experience more fulfilling.

"Goodbye, Dragon Inn" sits squarely with the second extreme to the extreme. Without moderation, director Tsai Ming Liang's filmmaking has taken a decidedly experimental turn in what is a decidedly minor work.

If Tsai's last film "What Time is it There?" was a love letter to the French New Wave, then Tsai's new film "Goodbye" is a love letter to King Hu's wuxia pian (Chinese swordsman) film "Dragon Inn." But instead of dramatic narrative, "Goodbye" features mainly the cinematic equivalents of a still life. One shot features a woman staring despondently for a good three or four minutes. Another features an empty theater. The lengths of these shots in which little to nothing happens almost dares the viewer to watch. To make the point even more gross, Tsai gives one of his main characters a limp, making her simple trips to clean the faciticilities a chore in and of itself as we watch her unhurriedly traverse the landscape.

Which brings me back to my original point. The audience member must decide on his/her what to do with the limited visual and aural information. Even the slightest camera pan can seem like a special effect in context. An intriguing use of quick cuts shows the limping woman staring at a powerful swordswoman on screen, perhaps the film’s most powerful contrast. But these observations require that the viewer is inquisitive and persistent. Should I watch the burning cigarette turn into ash or the actor’s performance or the shot composition or all of it (you really can since the shots take so much time)? Who are the people I'm watching and how did they get here? And what does it all mean?

So here’s what I came up with: the film is an existentialist study of the world of movie theaters. The film takes place entirely within a revival theater playing "Dragon Inn" to a nonexistent crowd. One of the film's themes is about the lack of culture in today's Taiwan. As the theater lies in ruins (rain water seeps everywhere), two older men meet coincidentally, disappointed by the turnout of the film they once starred in but still happy to run into each other. In fact, most of the people in the theater are either ghosts or people who use it as a place for liaisons.

In one of the most telling shots in the film, we see the inside of an empty theater cleaned by the woman with the limp. When she leaves Tsai lingers on the shot as if to say, "I wonder how empty the theater is at this screening of my film?" Indeed, his films are vigorously not for those who prefer to sit in front of a screen and be told what to think and feel (that distinction generally fits the majority of the population). This particular film is a poem about filmgoing, complete with a comment on the obligatory noisy person sitting next to you. Slowly you are shown the workings of this theater and its particular world. The point may simply be that this is the fate of the classics, the art house films, where Tsai's films are categorized, and by the inclusion of you in the audience, you are revolting against Tsai's empty theater.
-Howard Ho