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

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He reveals that he set out to make a work of slow cinema and that it knowingly explores the concept of ‘the gaze’. Slarek becomes absorbed by the film's lingering focus on suggestion and small character details and salutes the quality of Second Run's recent Blu-ray release. Given my initial uncertainty, I was surprised how involved I became in it and ultimately how much I gleaned from what is only suggested by what occurs on screen, and was certainly caught out by its poetic evocation of childhood memories, its moments of almost absurdist humour and its touching final moments.

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. If it seems as though I’m dancing around not just my own opinion of the film but what happens within it, you can put this down to the fact that Goodbye, Dragon Inn is not an easy film to start making even close to definitive statements about. That doesn’t mean I’ll like them, but I’ll certainly give the filmmaker credit for trying something that others might not even have considered. I’ve no doubt that an argument has been made that if that film was re-edited to bring the shot length down to a functional norm then it would probably run for only a couple of hours.

The very definition of a film that will starkly divide opinion, Goodbye, Dragon Inn is likely to prove frustrating and unsatisfying viewing for some, but if you can adjust to its slow pace and fascination with stillness and small moments, then there’s a good chance it will really work for you. Outside, he meets Miao Tien, who also acted in the film and attended the screening with his grandson. 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. Presented here in a new digital restoration, Goodbye, Dragon Inn is more ravishing and hypnotic than ever.

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. As someone for whom walking has become a problem in recent years, I am perhaps more sensitive to this aspect and really felt for the cashier when her shyness keeps her from handing the cake to a man to whom she is clearly attracted. 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. In an old Taipei movie theatre, on the eve of a ‘temporary closing’, King Hu’s 1967 wuxia classic Dragon Inn plays to a dwindling audience. Booklet featuring new essays by curator and critic Tony Rayns, plus a personal appreciation by filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.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. It's as if the theater knows it's done for, resigned to its fate, not yet ready to die, too tired to fight.