Synopsis
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (不散, 2003) is a hushed drama from Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang you can watch online on iFILM. On a rainy night in Taipei, a vast old movie palace plays its very last show before closing for good.
Up on the screen runs King Hu's 1967 wuxia classic Dragon Inn, all flying swords and inns full of assassins. Down in the near-empty hall there's almost no one: a ticket clerk who walks the corridors with a limp, an unseen projectionist, a scatter of lone spectators, and maybe a ghost among them. Dialogue is scarce. Tsai tells it through long static shots, the drum of rain, creaking seats, and footsteps in deserted hallways.
It's an elegy for the age of big cinema houses and for the people who come to sit in the dark for something more than the plot on the screen. The film screened in competition at Venice and became a touchstone of slow cinema. If Hou Hsiao-hsien or Béla Tarr speak to you, this quiet farewell to the picture palace will land. Stream Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003) online on iFILM.
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