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Realism, intertextuality and humour in Tsai Mingliang's
Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Chris Wood
a
a
Centre for World Cinemas, University of Leeds
Published online: 03 Jan 2014.
To cite this article: Chris Wood (2007) Realism, intertextuality and humour in Tsai Ming-liang's Goodbye, Dragon
Inn, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 1:2, 105-116
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/jcc.1.2.105_1
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Journal of Chinese Cinemas Volume 1 Number 2 © 2007 Intellect Ltd
Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jcc.1.2.105/1
Realism, intertextuality and humour in
Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Chris Wood Centre for World Cinemas, University of Leeds
Abstract
This article examines the uses of long takes, deep focus and intertextuality in Tsai
Ming-Liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn. Andre Bazin argued that long takes and
deep focus create a form of ‘cinematic humanism’. Tsai instead uses the techniques
to produce effects of disorientation and humour. The article then examines the
theory of intertextuality as proposed by Julia Kristeva. It is argued that Tsai uses
intertextuality to confuse the boundaries between Goodbye, Dragon Inn and King
Hu’s Dragon Gate Inn as well as between the viewer, the medium of film and the
cinema space. The article ends with a warning against putting too much faith in
grand theoretical structures to provide exhaustive readings of Tsai’s films. It is
argued that an aspect of Tsai’s cinema that is overlooked by such approaches is its
light-heartedness.
This article is a critical look at Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Bu San)
(2003), the cinematic techniques used and the effects produced. Tsai’s film
provides a rich ground for critical reading, raising both technical issues
over how certain effects are produced and wider cultural issues concerning
the changing meanings of cinematic techniques as they travel around the
world and are employed by diverse film-makers.
Goodbye, Dragon Inn is Tsai’s fifth full-length film. Like the majority of
his other films it is set in Taipei although the entire action of the film takes
place within and in the area immediately surrounding a cinema where
King Hu’s classic wuxia (swordplay) film Dragon Gate Inn (Longmen kezhan)
(1967) is being screened. The action of the film is minimal and follows
a series of characters within the cinema building. Among them are a
Japanese tourist who comes to the cinema seeking shelter from the rain,
the projectionist played by Tsai’s long-time collaborator Lee Kang-sheng, a
limping woman who works at front of house and two actors who appear in
Dragon Gate Inn and come to the cinema to watch themselves on-screen.
The film follows these characters as they slowly move around the cinema.
As in Tsai’s other films minimal dialogue and slow pacing concentrate the
viewer’s attention on the details of the actors’ physical performance.
In Goodbye, Dragon Inn Tsai frequently uses both long takes and deep
focus. In the long takes the camera holds its gaze on a specific place for a
long period of time, allowing the characters to move across the shot without
cutting to different angles to emphasize their movement. Deep focus complements
the use of long takes by centring the attention of the camera at a
point deep within the shot rather than focusing on objects close-up. These
105JCC 1 (2) 105–116 © Intellect Ltd 2007
Keywords
Tsai
realism
intertextuality
humour
Chinese cinema
Taiwan
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techniques are made all the more distinctive because a lack of narrative
action throughout concentrates the viewer’s attention on the visual aspects
of the film. In European film criticism, Andre Bazin argued that these techniques
work towards an accurate impression of reality; the long take retains
the integrity of time and deep focus retains the integrity of space. This marks
a break from a style of editing that privileges the act of telling a story above
all else. For Bazin, the great benefit of this realism is that ‘on the screen
everybody is overwhelmingly real. No one is reduced to the condition of an
object or a symbol that would allow one to hate them in comfort without
having first to leap the hurdle of their humanity’ (Bazin 1971: 21).
Although Bazin’s criticism is extremely effective when viewing European
film from immediately after World War II, it cannot provide a complete and
exhaustive reading of Goodbye, Dragon Inn. The use of long takes and deep
focus here do not work toward a kind of cinematic humanism. Instead, these
techniques make the familiar seem unfamiliar. In the process Tsai creates
wry, comic effects that call attention to the cinematic techniques in play.
Another noteworthy cinematic technique in Goodbye, Dragon Inn is
Tsai’s use of intertextuality; the process by which other texts are incorporated
into a specific text either by allusion or direct insertion. The
English title of Tsai’s film is a reference to King Hu’s wuxia (swordplay)
epic Dragon Gate Inn. Tsai stages his film within a cinema screening of
Dragon Gate Inn and in many of the scenes dialogue from Hu’s film can
be heard in the background. Julia Kristeva has written extensively on
intertexuality, arguing that it destabilizes what are often held as natural,
given meanings. Following Kristeva, we can say that Tsai’s recontextualization
of Dragon Gate Inn destabilizes the original meanings and associations
it may have held. Further effects created by the use of intertextuality are
consistent with the effects identified in Tsai’s use of realism by Chris
Berry (2005). The conceptual boundaries that separate the viewer from
the on-screen object of their gaze are constantly called into question
both within the film, as the characters sit in a cinema, and in a wider
sense of how we, as viewers, relate to Goodbye, Dragon Inn. Kristeva
(1986: 112) sees this process of destabilization as a socially engaged and
revolutionary process, but it will be argued again that Tsai uses this
technique for comic effect. The destabilization of Dragon Gate Inn is
extremely subtle and playful; the presence of dialogue from Hu’s film
providing a commentary for the minimal (and largely dialogue-free)
action of Goodbye, Dragon Inn.
Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh and Darrell William Davis note that critics often
construct extremely complex and tenuous readings of Tsai’s films.
These critics are often able to do this through a lack of knowledge
about specific cultural references. This article will therefore end with a
warning against putting too much faith in such readings. When using
European critical theory in relation to any text (especially nonEuropean
ones) it remains important to be aware of the context from
which that theory emerged and the limits of its applicability as well as
the ever-changing effects to which a set of techniques can be used. For
example, it will be argued that in Goodbye, Dragon Inn techniques of
deep focus and long takes are used to create disorientating effects
which are light-hearted and playful.
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Realist techniques in Goodbye, Dragon Inn
In his famous essay ‘An Aesthetic of Reality’ Andre Bazin (1971: 20) praised
Italian neo-realist cinema’s ‘perfect and natural adherence to actuality’. In
the same essay he praises Orson Welles’s use of deep focus to capture ‘a
fundamental quality of reality – its continuity’ (Bazin 1971: 28). Also
writing in the immediate aftermath of World War II, Cesare Zavatinni, a
leading figure in Italian neo-realism, strived for a temporal dimension of
film that was driven by something other than narrative drama: ‘the real time
of the narrative is not that of the drama but the concrete duration of the
character … the film is identical with what the actor is doing and with
this alone’ (quoted in Bondanella 1999: 64). The pacing and composition
of Goodbye, Dragon Inn appear to correspond well to this understanding of
realist cinema. The camera holds a shot for an extremely long time and
frequently takes advantage of deep-focus techniques to display the cinema’s
entrance and corridors. In Tsai’s film the principal character is the cinema
building itself. Thus, in the second scene, the camera gazes at the cinema
front for some time before a human character (Mitamura’s Japanese
tourist) enters the shot. The continuity of space is maintained through deep
focus, allowing Zavatinni’s ‘concrete duration of the character’ to be
depicted spatially as well as temporally. As Mitamura’s character moves
deeper into the cinema we are given a shot in which we see both him looking
around for some human presence and the woman who (we may presume)
usually looks after the front of house washing a glass in an adjoining
room, out of sight of Mitamura’s character. This simple narrative event is
depicted without cuts; the building’s spatial extension is preserved. Realist
theory is therefore useful in describing the technical processes at work in
Tsai’s film. However, although the techniques employed in Goodbye, Dragon
Inn are similar to those of Italian neo-realist cinema, we should not take
their application too literally. By using the building as the principal character,
Tsai’s film marks a break from the actor-driven realism advocated
by Zavatinni.
The question arises here as to how far cultural differences impair the
applicability of certain theories. The use of space in Chinese cinema, for
example, has been explained through the influence of Chinese landscape
painting,1
an influence that has been seen as more important than
European film techniques. David Bordwell (2001: 9), however, arguing
against the prevalence of culturally specific readings, concentrates on a
‘transcultural’ reading of Chinese cinema that concentrates on cultural
similarities rather than differences. Fran Martin criticizes this ‘transcultural’
mode of analysis, specifically questioning Bordwell’s analysis of the
reasons for the Taiwanese adoption of the long take. By suggesting the
long take could have been adopted because it is less demanding for nonprofessional
actors or to brand their film as non-commercial, at best
‘Bordwell misses an opportunity to interrogate the broader cultural
politics’ at work. At worst, one might say, ‘European modernist film style
is treated as if it were a “natural stage” in Taiwan cinema’s progress toward
some presumptively universal film aesthetic based on European norms’
(Martin 2003).
We should note here that Tsai is strongly aware of the work of European
film-makers. He cites Francois Truffaut as his favourite director (Martin 2003)
107‘Realism, intertextuality and humour in Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn’
1. Bordwell (2001)
quotes Lai (1980) as
an example of this.
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and includes sections of his 400 Blows (Les 400 Coups) (1959) in his film
What Time is it There? (Ni Neibian Jidian) (2001). However, by using these
techniques, Tsai need not be producing an emulation of or tribute to
European film realism; he could be parodying them or simply using the
same techniques to create a completely different effect. Kim Ji-seok argues
that in The Missing (directed by Tsai’s long-time collaborator, Li Kang-sheng)
‘familiar surroundings suddenly become unfamiliar through long takes. As
a result the main character’s confusion is palpable to the audience’ (quoted
in Yeh and Davis 2005: 237). This analysis also works very well for
Goodbye, Dragon Inn. The long takes of the cinema front and the stairs leading
up to the projection room turn the familiar setting of a cinema into a
strange and empty place. The effects produced foreshadow the fear of
ghosts that Mitamura’s character experiences later in the film in a sequence
where he flees from a woman he believes to be haunting the cinema. The
use of deep focus also makes familiar surroundings look strange. In a shot
where the woman from the front of house reaches the top of the stairs on
her way to the projection room to deliver some cake, we see her move to the
back of the shot and open a door. This immediately deepens the focus of
the shot. She then moves further back and does the same thing, deepening
the shot again. Deep focus is used not to create a more recognizable, realistic
image of the world, but rather to alter our impression of the world depicted
on-screen, making familiar surroundings seem immediately unfamiliar.
These uses of deep focus and long takes serve to give the cinema, depicted
on-screen, a life of its own. This life, however, need not be the accurate
portrayal that realist cinema aspires to.
Chris Berry argues that the realism in Tsai’s film Vive L’Amour (Aiqing
Wansui) (1994) ‘performs its realism so excessively as to draw attention
to itself’ (Berry 2005: 89). Likewise, in Goodbye, Dragon Inn, the tropes of
cinematic realism are emphasized to such an extent as to draw attention to
them. In addition to the uses made of the long take and deep focus described
above, the slow pacing of Tsai’s film emphasizes the lack of narrative and
focuses the viewer’s attention on the performance of everyday actions.
Examples of this are the extremely long takes of the woman from front
of house washing a glass and attempting to remove a hot cake from the
rice cooker next to her desk. However, this is where Tsai’s realism breaks
from the Bazinian mode. Where Bazinian realism purports to capture the
actual, Tsai’s realism performs a conception of the real. In one sequence
Mitamura’s character meets a man while wandering around the back
corridors of the cinema, The man offers him a cigarette and begins to talk
about ghosts. Mitamura does not seem to understand and replies ‘I am
Japanese’ but not before leaning into the man’s neck in a sinister motion
that evokes F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922). Although this scene is shot in
long take and deep focus with all the hallmarks of Bazinian realism, the
action captured by this realist mode is performative and self-aware. The
conversation about ghosts introduces a theme that will recur later to
comic effect (when Mitamura’s character flees from a woman he believes
is a ghost) and the language difficulties experienced by the characters as
well as the vampiric lean into the man’s neck serve to disorientate the
viewer, again making apparently familiar situations seem unfamiliar and
strange. By allowing his mode of realism to become aware of its own
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performance, Tsai opens up the possibility of new uses for old techniques.
The adherence to actuality that previously defined realism is displaced by
a new awareness of the relationship of realist performance to the viewer.
The classic cinematic-realist style, no longer only able to represent the
actual, can therefore be used to create effects of humour, disorientation
and, as Berry (2005: 90) argues in the case of Vive L’Amour, a sympathetic
‘indulgence’ towards the characters on behalf of the audience that, along
with Tsai’s use of intertextuality, ultimately destabilizes the conceptual
separation of viewer and viewed object.
There is an extent to which the invocation of realism can also be seen
as parody, a destabilization of the norms of that tradition. This effect,
however, relies on an intertextual knowledge of both realist cinema and
the criticism surrounding it. While Tsai is certainly aware of this tradition,
a much more blatant intertextual reference is the film, which lends
Goodbye, Dragon Inn its English title, King Hu’s popular wuxia epic, Dragon
Gate Inn.
Intertexual play and destabilization: Dragon Gate Inn inside
Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Tsai’s film opens with the soundtrack and narration of King Hu’s Dragon
Gate Inn. This is accompanied visually by Goodbye, Dragon Inn’s credits.
When the credits have finished rolling we cut to the visual layer of Hu’s
film (which occupies the whole screen) and the unity of video and soundtrack
are restored. We then cut further back to a crowded cinema interior
to see people watching the film. This scene can be read as a wider comment
within Goodbye, Dragon Inn on people’s relationship to film, a sense carried
by the Chinese title of the film; Bu San (literally: not dispersing). Over the
course of the film we see a cinema that was once full completely empty
out, culminating in the extreme long shot of an empty auditorium. Bu San
can also be read as a playful comment by Tsai on the state of his own
domestic audiences who have dispersed dramatically in recent years. The
theme of people’s relationship to the cinema (both as a building and in the
general sense of the film medium) also dominates the action within
Goodbye, Dragon Inn and as the characters move through the cinema
auditorium their movements are constantly accompanied by the soundtrack
of Hu’s Dragon Gate Inn.
While the film is certainly a comment on people’s close relationship
to the cinema, intertextual techniques are also used to destabilize the conceptual
positions that differentiate the viewing subject from the viewed
object. Among the most prominent writers on intertextuality in the West
is Julia Kristeva. She employs the Husserlian concept of a thetic phase of
meaning ‘which contains the object as well as the proposition, and the
complicity between them’ (Kristeva 1986: 99). This phase separates the
identities of the object and the uttered signifying proposition:
The thetic posits the signifiable object: it posits signification as both a denotation
(of an object) and an enunciation (of a displaced subject, absent from the
signified and signifying position). From then on, the thetic prepares and contains
within itself the very possibility of making this division explicit.
(Kristeva 1986: 106, emphasis in original)
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She argues that the operation of intertextuality involves ‘an altering of the
thetic position – the destruction of the old position and the creation of a
new one’ (Kristeva 1986: 111, emphasis in original). In this way the
separation between subject and object or viewer and viewed, which the thetic
position claims, is undermined. Kristeva’s motivation here is the ‘struggle to
employ pre-existent signifying practices for different purposes’ (Allen
2000: 54). She is concerned with freeing linguistic signifiers from a monologic
existence where they must always mean/refer to the same thing, thereby
allowing their meanings and significance to become more fluid and ultimately
‘set in motion what dogma suppresses’, allowing ‘the signifying
process [to join] the social revolution’ (Kristeva 1986: 112). This process,
allowing radical shifts in referential meaning, is employed throughout
Goodbye, Dragon Inn to destabilize apparently secure notions of genre film
(via Dragon Gate Inn) the status of different films as self-contained
objects and ultimately the viewer’s relationship to both film and the
cinema space.
Yeh and Davis see Dragon Gate Inn ‘almost as a host, through which
[Tsai’s] contemporary vignettes unfold parasitically’ (Yeh and Davis
2005: 236). In their view, the ‘homophobic conflict’ (Yeh and Davis
2005: 136) of the martial-arts tradition (with its demonization of
eunuchs) is subverted by the ‘homosexual ghost story’ (Yeh and Davis
2005: 136) that comprises the action of Goodbye, Dragon Inn. Both the
homophobia of the martial-arts tradition and the Goodbye, Dragon Inn’s
status as a homosexual ghost story (through reading Mitamura’s character’s
wanderings as cruising for sex) are debatable, but the possibility of
reading a shift in meaning is clear. Hu’s film, a lavish generic epic, is
recontextualized by Tsai to a destabilized position that allows the possibility
of readings such as that of Yeh and Davis.
The importance of intertextuality in Goodbye, Dragon Inn is made visible
right from the start of the film, when the spectator is greeted by the incongruous
experience of seeing a Tsai Ming-liang film (cemented by the introductory
legend ‘a Tsai Ming-liang film’) opening with the well-known
theme and narration of a completely different film. Throughout the film
the camera looks at members of the audience while the audio track from
Dragon Gate Inn plays. This technique creates several effects. First, it alters
perceptions of Hu’s film, distancing the spectator from the generic dialogue.
Second, it allows the dialogue of Dragon Gate Inn to provide a commentary
on the minimal action of Tsai’s film. For example, as Mitamura Kiyonobu’s
character enters the near-deserted auditorium, the disembodied voice from
Dragon Gate Inn says: ‘They couldn’t have gotten far, we can catch up.’
Again, as the camera watches Mitamura’s character sitting and watching
the film, the seats around deserted except for a couple in the back of the
shot, we hear the following dialogue:
Voice 1: How many guests are staying here?
Voice 2: This month we don’t have any.
Voice 1: Good, I’ll book the entire inn.
Voice 2: The entire inn?
Voice 1: We’ll be living here for five to ten days or so. While we stay
here don’t take any other guests. Do you understand?
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This exchange not only acts as a knowing commentary on the empty cinema
but also invokes the theme of haunting which is prominent in the film.
One can take the inn mentioned in the dialogue as referring, not to the
inn of the film’s title, but to the cinema in which Mitamura’s character
is sitting. Indeed, the parallels between the cinema and inn, which reinforce
this reading, have been drawn in a previous scene when we see
Mitamura’s character seeking refuge from a rainstorm in the cinema. In
Dragon Gate Inn two characters also come to the inn seeking refuge from a
rainstorm. The cinema-goers in Goodbye, Dragon Inn are tied to Dragon Gate
Inn as the actions they perform are echoed and commentated on by the
action that takes place on-screen as they move through the cinema.
Throughout Tsai’s film the inseparability of the film and viewer is conveyed
through near-constant intertextual play. This is realized most succinctly in
a scene where we see the woman from front of house open a door next to
the cinema screen. She steps through the door and looks at the screen.
She remains there for a minute or so before returning through the door
and watching the screen from behind. We then see a series of rapid cuts
suggesting an interaction between the woman and an on-screen
swordswoman in Dragon Gate Inn. The rapid cuts between Tsai’s film and
Dragon Gate Inn are all the more noticeable because of the extremely long
takes which make up the rest of the film. This scene creates a number of
effects. It emphasizes a strong link between cinema and viewer also
implied in the film’s Chinese title. This can be understood as something
akin to the effect of ‘indulgence’ that Chris Berry notes in Vive L’Amour.
Here, Berry argues, the mode of performative realism that Tsai uses creates
a ‘consoling effect’ whereby the characters perform their loneliness in
such a way that the audience enters into a sympathetic relationship with
them (Berry 2005: 90). Berry’s analysis is relevant to a discussion of
intertextuality because his conception of performative realism also serves
to unite the experience of the viewer and the filmic object, distorting and
destabilizing the boundaries that separate the two. Intertextuality in
Goodbye, Dragon Inn, however, destabilizes not only the boundary between
viewer and film but also the boundaries between the cinema auditorium
and the cinema screen and ultimately between the viewer of Tsai’s film
and their expectations of the film-viewing experience.
For the characters in Goodbye, Dragon Inn, the boundaries between
viewer and film are frequently blurred. In addition to the sequence
described above, towards the end of the film a scene appears in which Miao
Tien and an opponent fight on-screen (in Dragon Gate Inn) while staring
each other down (as viewers) across the cinema auditorium. Sequences
such as the two described here can be explained in terms of Kristevan
intertextuality whereby the thetic position of a signifiable object (Dragon
Gate Inn) as separate from the subject (the viewer within the auditorium) is
challenged and broken down. In the first case, the woman (from the front
of house) as the viewing subject is allowed to interact with the film as onscreen
object. This effect is created by Tsai’s composition and editing. First, she
is placed in the frame alongside the screen showing Dragon Gate Inn. She
then moves from standing next to the screen to standing behind (and
thereby within) the screen. Finally, the rapid series of cuts between her and
one of Dragon Gate Inn’s on-screen protagonists creates the impression of
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conversation and exchange between viewing subject and viewed object.
The thetic position of the object, which previously separated the two, is
overcome and the possibility of exchange is created. Later, in the scene
where Miao Tien and his opponent sit in the auditorium watching themselves
fight on-screen, a similar effect is achieved. The on-screen swordfight
between the two is given a direct off-screen analogue as the two
actors, now over thirty years older, trade glances across the empty cinema.
The distinction between viewing subject and on-screen object is therefore
strongly confused in this sequence: Miao Tien and his opponent are simultaneously
viewing subject and viewed object. The fact that, as viewing
subjects, they are much older further destabilizes Dragon Gate Inn as a selfcontained
cinematic world. While the stars of Dragon Gate Inn remain
young forever on-screen, off-screen their bodies age and their lives continue.
As if to emphasize this point, Miao Tien is depicted visiting the cinema
with his grandson. The on-screen characters of Dragon Gate Inn who, in
contrast, remain unchanged, are likened to ghosts haunting the auditorium
providing both extra-diegetic commentary on and conversation with
the viewers.
The significance of cinematic ghosts elsewhere in Tsai’s oeuvre is
noted by Brian Hu who describes Tsai’s nostalgia for 1960s Mandarin
Chinese film and his use of popular song from this era as a means of
communication with the past (Hu 2003). This process can be seen
through the inclusion of Grace Chang songs in The Hole (Dong) (1998)
and is echoed in the inclusion of another song from that era as the closing
theme of Goodbye, Dragon Inn. The figure of the ghost in Tsai’s films
therefore acts as a bridge between the present and the past. In this way
the screening of Dragon Gate Inn in Goodbye, Dragon Inn overcomes temporal
distance, linking 1960s Taiwanese popular culture to the present and
the future. The present is represented by an elderly Miao Tien and the
future being represented by his grandson. In Tsai’s film What Time is it
There? the inclusion of scenes from Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and the presence
of that film’s child star Jean-Pierre Léaud (now a middle-aged man)
achieve similar effects in overcoming the temporal distance between the
past and the present. In What Time is it There? time is also used as a means
to overcome spatial distance as Lee Kang-sheng’s character obsessively
resets clocks in Taipei to display the time in Paris. The desire to eliminate
temporal and spatial distance in Tsai’s films can also be read in
Kristevan terms. Just as intertextuality seeks to overcome the distance
between subject and object, so the elimination of temporal and spatial
distance seeks to collapse distinctions between ‘now and then’ or ‘here
and there’. In the disorientation that follows this process, new spaces can
be created through the performance of realism, humour or the nostalgic
recreation of popular culture from the past.
There is also an extent to which Kristeva’s notion of intertextuality
acts as a metaphor for the cinema-going experience of viewing Tsai’s film.
A film is designed to be screened in multiple locations and viewed by different
people. In this way it will have no fixed meaning, no correct reading;
it is being constantly recontextualized. Indeed, the multiple positions
of the cinema-going experience are represented visually in the opening
scenes of Goodbye, Dragon Inn. The camera takes the position of a viewer
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surreptitiously peering out from behind a curtain, followed by a viewer in
the middle of the stalls. The camera then takes two more positions, one
further back and the other to the right before coming to rest directly
behind the heads of Tsai and LeeYou-hsin (a prominent Taiwanese queer
critic who makes a cameo appearance here).
Although the process that destabilizes and allows for constant recontextualization
of the filmic object can be explained technically in Kristevan
terms, we should not assume that it shares the same social-revolutionary
motivation as the Kristevan project. Although Tsai has been claimed as
director who draws on social alienation and ‘queer’ themes which celebrate
the marginal (see Marchetti 2005) I would argue that the intertextuality, as
it is employed in Goodbye, Dragon Inn, is also motivated to comic effects and a
desire to entertain that is frequently overlooked in criticism of his films.
The dangers of over-criticism
In the case of a film as elusive as Goodbye, Dragon Inn, conclusions are slippery
things to grasp and although the critical theory mentioned in this essay
provides a helpful tool with which to speculate about Tsai’s film, one
should be cautious in using it to draw cast-iron conclusions. Yeh and
Davis note that: ‘[f]rom time to time prevailing discourse even spins a mystical
aura around [Tsai’s] films, especially in French writing, because the more
specific, localized contexts fail to catch the eyes of these critics’ (Yeh and
Davis 2005: 220). As an example, they cite an interview with Tsai conducted
by French critics Jean-Pierre Rehm, Olivier Joyard and Danièle Rivière in
which Tsai jokes:
You also draw attention in Vive L’Amour to the odour of May’s underarm
sweat. Do these bodily manifestations signify that the body is escaping from
itself, becoming diluted, dematerialized, or on the contrary, does this oozing
show that it is still alive? [laughter] That’s something I’ve never wondered
about!
(Rehm, Joyard and Rivière 1999: 114)
For critics working on Tsai’s films, there is often a weight of expectation
regarding what the films are and, indeed, should be. Chris Fujiwara complains
that ‘The Hole displays the director’s sense at its most exact, but the film
seems precious and cute when it should be mysterious and transcendent’
(Fujiwara 2002). Therefore, there remains a danger of approaching Tsai’s
films with critical tools that are effective in analysing the sophisticated
technical processes at work but can be misleading if they are used to
explain his motivations, or what critics assume his films ‘should’ be saying.
In the use of Bazinian and Kristevan theory, one would be wrong to
assume that the presence of certain techniques means that those techniques
are always motivated toward the same effects. Bazin is interested in
cinema as a humanist artistic intervention while Kristeva wants to set the
very process of signification against social dogma and for social revolution.
I would argue that the use of long takes, deep focus and intertexuality in
Goodbye, Dragon Inn is rather intended to destabilize the viewer’s expectations
in such a way as to create wry, comic effects that draw their humour
from the audience’s frustrated expectations.
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Although Bazin and Kristeva’s work is frequently very informative (as
it is here in terms of identifying the technical processes at work), one
should bear in mind cultural and temporal differences between the contexts
that specific theories emerge from and the text in question. In Goodbye,
Dragon Inn, the humanism which drove Bazin’s writing in the wake of
World War II and the revolutionary engagement of Kristeva’s work in the
wake of the May 1968 student uprisings lack cultural resonance. The
limping woman, for example, could be read as part of a project of humanist
realism. Under this reading, the long take forces the camera (and thereby
the spectator) to move at her pace through the cinema’s old corridors,
thereby creating a sympathetic realist portrayal. I would, however, read
both the limp and use of deep focus here as self-consciously playful and
performative. In Tsai’s film it is the long shot that (literally) comes first and the
people in it that come after. In this way, the limping woman acts out
the pace of the shot, drawing our attention to it by giving us a human
metaphor that moves at the same halting speed. This sequence can be read
as humorous in the sense that it plays with the audience’s expectations of
how fast people should walk in a film and how the camera should follow
them doing this.
The use of deep focus is also essentially playful. When the woman
opens the successive doors at the back of the frame, our expectations and
understanding of the depth of the shot are undermined, not just once but
several times. This echoes Kim Ji-seok’s analysis of the use of long shots to
make ‘familiar surroundings suddenly become unfamiliar’ (quoted in Yeh
and Davis 2005: 237). This effect is linked with the ultimately humorous
ghost-story theme later in this film which sees Mitamura flee the auditorium
in slapstick fear. The playfulness of Tsai’s use of long shots and deep
focus can be seen in his other films. A fine example of this would be
the extreme long shot of a stream of urine coming out of Miao Tien in The
River (He Liu) (1997). The playful humour here relies on the fact that
Miao Tien is a respected actor in Taiwan and that he is urinating for a
super-human length of time. Although this scene could be read both as
realist and as a parody of realism, it seems more intuitive to concentrate
on the comic effect produced by having a respected actor taking a very
long piss.
Conclusions
Goodbye, Dragon Inn’s use of long takes and deep focus initially seem to
correspond to our understanding of European realist cinema. However,
Tsai breaks from this humanist tradition first by using the building itself as the
principal character and second by frustrating our notions of the familiar.
Tsai’s use of realist techniques is less about creating an accurate picture of
the world and more about parodying the real through exaggerated performance;
manipulating what the viewer initially takes for granted to create
a series of comic effects.
The intertextuality of Goodbye, Dragon Inn cements the characters’ (and
by extension our) inseparable relationship to the cinema. At the same
time, it destabilizes our impression of what, in Taiwan, is a well-known
genre film. The recontextualization of Dragon Gate Inn further acts as a
metaphor for the viewer’s changing relationship with the cinema-going
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experience itself. While viewing Dragon Gate Inn was previously done in a
crowded cinema, the meanings have since shifted; in the bulk of Tsai’s film
Dragon Gate Inn narrates the life of empty spaces, filling them with the
ghosts of the past. However, bearing in mind that Dragon Gate Inn is a
widely seen piece of genre cinema, this process remains knowing, playful
and ultimately humorous. As Tsai uses intertextuality to break down the
conceptual boundaries between viewer and cinema he is able to manipulate
his viewers and their expectations. Just as the woman from the front
of house finds herself having a conversation with the swordswoman in
Dragon Gate Inn, so Tsai uses intertexuality to converse with his viewers,
playing with and occasionally frustrating the traditional viewer/object
relationship.
The playful humour that emerges in Goodbye, Dragon Inn’s sophisticated
use of cinematic techniques such as deep focus or intertextuality should be
kept in mind when discussing Tsai’s films. Although it is often tempting to
compose grand stories in which Tsai fulfils the fantasies of European critical
theory, ultimately what makes Tsai’s cinema so compelling is its light-hearted
playfulness.
Works cited
Allen, Graham (2000), Intertexuality, New York and London: Routledge.
Bazin, Andre (1971), What is Cinema? Volume 2 (trans. Hugh Gray), Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Berry, Chris (2005), ‘Where is the Love? Hyperbolic Realism and Indulgence in
Vive L’Amour’, in Chris Berry and Feii Lu (eds.), Island on the Edge: Taiwan New
Cinema and After, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, pp. 89–100.
Bondanella, Peter (1999), Italian Cinema from Neorealism to the Present (expanded
edition), New York: Continuum.
Bordwell, David (2001), ‘Transcultural Spaces: Toward a Poetics of Chinese Film’,
Post Script, 20, pp. 2–3, 9–24.
Fujiwara, Chris (2002), Of Space and Solitude: The MFA Celebrates the Genius of
Taiwan’s Tsai Ming-liang, available online at http://www.bostonphoenix.com/
boston/ movies/documents/02164886.htm
Accessed 1 December 2006.
Hu, Brian (2003), Goodbye City, Goodbye Cinema: Nostalgia in Tsai Ming-liang’s
The Skywalk is Gone, available online at http://www.sensesofcinema.com/
contents/03/29/skywalk_is_gone.html
Accessed 1 December 2006.
Kristeva, Julia (1986), ‘Revolution in Poetic Language’, in Toril Moi (ed.), The Kristeva
Reader, Oxford: Blackwell.
Lai, C. (1980), Understanding Chinese Painting, Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh.
Marchetti, Gina (2005), ‘On Tsai Ming-liang’s The River’, in Chris Berry and Feii Lu
(eds.), Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After, Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press, pp. 113–26.
Martin, Fran (2003), ‘The European Undead: Tsai Ming-liang’s Temporal Dysphoria’,
Senses of Cinema, available online at http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/
03/27/tsai_european_undead.html
Accessed 10 May 2006.
Rehm, Jean-Pierre, Joyard, Olivier and Rivière, Danièle (1999), Tsai Ming-liang,
Paris: Dis Voir.
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Yeh, Emilie Yueh-yu and Davis, Darrell William (2005), Taiwan Film Directors:
A Treasure Island, New York: Columbia University Press.
Suggested citation
Wood, C. (2007), ‘Realism, intertextuality and humour in Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye,
DragonInn’, JournalofChineseCinemas 1: 2, pp. 105–116, doi: 10.1386/ jcc.1.2.105/1
Contributor details
Chris Wood recently completed his Masters at the Centre for World Cinemas,
University of Leeds. His research interests include contemporary Japanese film,
animation, video games and new media. Contact: C/o Centre for World Cinemas,
University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, United Kingdom.
E-mail: chris.peter.wood@gmail.com
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