Tsai Ming-Liang

I can't bring much to the party as I only possess Goodbye, Dragon Inn which is painfully curious if somnambulant (watched it only once). Does anyone have any particular favorites? Thoughts? I need to sample more of his stuff. Thanks.

at this point i've seen just about everything. or at least every commercially available feature he's done thusfar. missed out on the chance to see a work he was showing at the biennale in Venice last summer (thanks a lot, mom).
while making such distinctions isn't all that useful, he nonetheless seems to be awful close to being the best filmmaker in the world right now (or at least that i know of).
funny that you started with Goodbye, Dragon Inn, because i did too, and i really didn't know what to make of it for the most part. i have yet to revisit that one, and i'd be really curious to see how i would find it now, on the other side of his work. it still probably has one of my favourite moments from Tsai's work, which i hesitate to describe further, because it'd kind of ruin the effect for someone seeing it for the first time.
that film seems to be the most austere thing he has produced thusfar. i am quite partial to his two most recent films, A Wayward Cloud and I Don't Want To Sleep Alone Tonight, which are both very beautiful, and perhaps a little bit more "full" and emotionally rewarding than some of his earlier work. i have a hard time deciding if this makes them more "simple" less challenging works... i'm pretty sure i like them the most.
The River is definitely another to check out.

Yes, I agree with Franz (and the majority of film critics) that Tsai is amongst the most interesting filmmakers working in the world today. Cynics might say that he ticks many of the classic 'arthouse' boxes - slowness, frustrated communication, aestheticised long shots - but for those who like the style, he is one of the best contemporary exponents. Goodbye Dragon Inn is one of my favourites, since it puts the emphasis so heavily on abandoned communal space, but there is a visual and thematic consistency through all his work (like one, like them all). Perhaps they would seem less strange/estranging to someone intimately familiar with the city of Taipei, although I doubt it.

One might think of him, to put it in reductive historical terms, as the Antonioni of the 90s/00s, just as the industrial baton has passed from the West to Asia.

Thanks for the words, not a big Antonioni fan here but I'm eager to see more. Just ordered The River used off Amazon for $4.50, never done that before hope it's not a janky copy.

i think precisely what makes Tsai such a great filmmaker is the fact that while he does indeed deal in slowness, urban solitude and millenarianism it is never as an end in and of itself--as it seems to be for so many filmmakers and artists who fall short. While Tsai's worlds are very bizarre and austere in certain respects they are nonetheless being worked through and on by these very fleshy, often silly characters. these characters are not consummately composed surfaces (as many believe Antonioni's to be, for example... i am a little bit less convinced of this, but i digress), nor are they shallow caricatures at whose expense we are enjoying a film.

i've pulled this really great quote from Kent Jones on Tsai for use on a few occasions:

"it has nothing to do with the old ideas of urban impersonality and alienation. There's no pre-existing, Edenic reality at which Tsai's ordinary people look back wistfully. This is their world, and all that concrete, asphalt and formica is just a regular part of it. Like New York or Tokyo, his Taipei seems to be operating according to a
new physics, in which the city itself is set in motion by the private obsessions and biological quirks of the individuals who live within it, and within whom it lives..."

all of this is to say that Tsai, in my opinion, faces up to contemporaneity in his own unique way--and allows it to be a positive thing often, albeit a positivity that was only earned through struggle. i am aware that this all sounds a touch obtuse, but if you actually sit through and ride the emotional currents of films like the Hole and the River and his two most recent features, i think you will know what i mean. these films are not unwaveringly rosy in outlook, but they do not stunt their emotional range, either.
while Tsai is far from the sole inheritant of some highly aestheticized art-film tradition, his inheritance has a pulse, which cannot always be said for others, imo.

have seen it all too, and also a big fan.. I would definitely concur on 'Goodbye Dragon Inn' (but probably not for starters) and 'I Don't Want To Sleep Alone'; would add 'The Hole' and 'What Time Is It There?', the latter (the first one I saw, one sleepless night on the sorely missed Arte channel) featuring a few scenes from 'Les 400 Coups' and Jean-Pierre L?aud himself!

The River is amazing. Lee Kang-sheng's spasms throughout could not have been taught. Between the water buckets and the warm fatherhood, I'm speechless. More hyperbole after I watch it again. And the elevator mirror of the mother, those elevator hums.

we saw The River last night, I've only seen Goodbye Dragon Inn before.

his movies seem to have a similar effect on me as an intense dream, very powerful, not much going on in the way of plot or development, and when it's over, I don't remember much but I'm still somehow seriously impacted, maybe even changed, at least semi-temporarily (a day or two). this isn't meant as a negative thing, I'm curious to see more, I Don't Want To Sleep Alone is up next.

I've seen most of his films that are available, as well... I dug The Hole a lot, was pretty bemused/fascinated by The Wayward Cloud. I just saw I Don't Want To Sleep Alone which I thought was a really interesting work in almost magic realism (although one can argue if that's a correct term for what he does) that I've always found really interesting. The River is very good indeed and, like many of his works, filled with painfully uncomfortable moments, but anchored by such palpable feeling... He's probably the only film maker other than Tarr that I find myself really actively waiting for their next film, despite whether I end up liking it or not. Someone mentioned him being like Antonioni (which I can't really comment on as I'm not too familiar with his work) but I've always seen elements of Bresson in there-- the use of non-actors, the shirking of audience expectation, and yes, the long takes. Although one may argue that Tsai's style of long shots, fetishized shots of water, dance/song numbers are only fufilling expectations at this point. Actually, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone seemed very different in this respect, compared to say the earlier Vive L'Amour, which is at some points excruciatingly protracted. However, perhaps the the least interesting film I've seen by him is one of the first, Rebels of the Neon God, where his style is yet to be fully realized IMO.

Anyone seen Face?

yep.

maybe not quite as satisfying as the last few, but it's neat because it's a bit different in terms of approach. as with all his films it seems, it demands/rewards patience... and doesn't begin to feel like it's paying off for quite a while. the two friends i went with both walked out of the theatre after about an hour.

don't think anyone could've made a film about the louvre as he has... the moment where Leaud as king busts through some random base-board tile next to a classic painting (escapes me what it was at this point) is pretty amazing.

a bit more funny than usual. a bit more bewildering. not as much of an emotional thruline as there had been in I Don't Want To Sleep Alone or Wayward Cloud, for example...

if the idea of Laetitia Casta as Salome didn't make so much sense to me when i was reading about the film in advance, it certainly clicked when i saw it. Tsai is having a lot of fun with fashion here... definitely an interesting element on hand.

and he still finds amazing totally singular non-referential images to be expressed with the format like next to nobody else working at the moment. truly a filmmaker deserving of a bit of budget here and there.

Someone mentioned him being like Antonioni (which I can't really comment on as I'm not too familiar with his work) but I've always seen elements of Bresson in there-- the use of non-actors, the shirking of audience expectation, and yes, the long takes.

elements, sure... but Bresson is one of those filmmakers whom you can barely compare to anyone... lots of people love his work but nobody really cares to make films as he does, in my opinion. and i don't really blame them.
just watched Le Diable Probablement the other night, and had a fresh look at what a Bresson film looks like. you could even make a case for a kinship between the two filmmakers, in terms of exhausting their performers... but even here: Bresson's exhaustion is so arid, and bloodless, in contrast to the limpid humidity of Tsai's poor Lee
his style is pretty insanely particular...as is Tsai's, i suppose...

Someone mentioned him being like Antonioni (which I can't really comment on as I'm not too familiar with his work) but I've always seen elements of Bresson in there-- the use of non-actors, the shirking of audience expectation, and yes, the long takes.

elements, sure... but Bresson is one of those filmmakers whom you can barely compare to anyone... lots of people love his work but nobody really cares to make films as he does, in my opinion. and i don't really blame them.
just watched Le Diable Probablement the other night, and had a fresh look at what a Bresson film looks like. you could even make a case for a kinship between the two filmmakers, in terms of exhausting their performers... but even here: Bresson's exhaustion is so arid, and bloodless, in contrast to the limpid humidity of Tsai's poor Lee
his style is pretty insanely particular...as is Tsai's, i suppose...

Sorry, just saw this. Huh. Yeah, probably a facile comparison, but still makes a bit of sense to me. But honestly, I have to go and watch some Bresson again, as it's been a long time. Sounds a little exhausting at this point, though. "Limpid humidity" is a great description.

Sorry, just saw this. Huh. Yeah, probably a facile comparison, but still makes a bit of sense to me. But honestly, I have to go and watch some Bresson again, as it's been a long time. Sounds a little exhausting at this point, though. "Limpid humidity" is a great description.

nah, not facile. having thought about it some more, i've found it instructive. but yeah, they are both pretty singular, and in the end working in totally different milieu: French countryside (maybe occasionally the banlieu) versus south pacific megalopoli... film's too reliant on place (and it's an acute strength of both bodies of work in question) for those two situations to balance out too well.

but yeah, Bresson is just something to wrestle with, wouldn't want to discourage it... i guess rather than get off topic i'll carry the rest of this thought elsewhere...

i've only seen 'A Conversation With God', which i loved.

i've only seen 'A Conversation With God', which i loved.

I had never even heard of this one until now, but from the descriptions I read it sounds interesting.

I like the word "somnambulant" used earlier to describe Tsai's movies.

The comparison with Bresson is an awkward one but I think its also strangely apt, for most of the reasons mentioned above. Thinking about it there are also other similar qualities. For example I find both Bresson and Tsai tend to reward the viewer with certain scenes, particularly towards the end of their films, that are almost inexplicably emotionally affecting and contain a strange, symbolic resonance that lasts long after you've finished watching. It's this haunting quality that I admire in both their films, although I prefer Tsai's.