User reviews

At the risk of coming on too strong, I think the other posters here who disliked this film were idiots. True, Good-bye Dragon Inn is EXTREMELY slow. Almost nothing happens in the film. Nonetheless, it is truly excellent. A great, subtle ghost story...

It's especially good if you have ever been to any of the big, old, concrete movie theaters in Asia... Theaters that are now being totally replaced by multiplexes.

Good-bye Dragon Inn is basically a poem to the old cinema culture of Asia. I have great memories of going to those huge, decaying movie theaters... in summer to escape the heat... during the rainy season, when the sound of the rain almost drowned out the film itself. Great stuff.

If you've read the other reviews, you know what you're in for. Don't worry about spoilers (none here, but don't worry about others'), because not much happens in the movie. Tsai paints his movies at the speed of Michelangelo painting a ceiling--no, he unreels them at the speed of the epic that's played this old movie house a thousand times. As in other Tsai movies, the colors are rich, and even the starkest images are carefully composed, allowing the film to convey the full depth of feelings.

That's what this movie does. It doesn't tell a story, really, but conveys what it's like to walk along empty city streets on a rainy night, alone. And what it's like to be in a dying old movie palace. The community that has outgrown the old Fu Ho cinema seems to tell its patrons, its employees, and even the building itself that all of them really ought to be somewhere else. But there they are, where they need to be, for the last show.

The movie's point of view is variously that of the young limping woman, the Japanese kid, and the old actors, but ultimately, Tsai tells the story from the theater's point of view, as if he interviewed it Tsai-style, pointing the camera at it and letting the theater speak at its edificial pace. You feel all that it's seen and sees, every day. It's as if the theater knows it's done for, resigned to its fate, not yet ready to die, too tired to fight.

It doesn't matter that the theater is in Taipei. Anyone who had a special place for movies, especially if it's gone, will be able to see that theater in the Fu Ho. I thought of my last visits to Seattle's Coliseum, King and United Artists theaters, and how they clung to life in their final days. All of them could seat hundreds of patrons, maybe a thousand even, and I never once saw them close to filled. The King is now a megachurch, the Coliseum is a Banana Republic, and the UA is dust, with the marquee sign marking its grave. The movies that played there live on in DVDs and shoebox megaplexes, but their days of playing in grand auditoria to great audiences are largely gone. How can "Lawrence of Arabia" be "Lawrence" in a shoebox, or on any CRT or LCD screen?

Norma Desmond told us about the pictures getting smaller. Tsai warns us that the last days of the big screen are here, and that the credits are rolling. Many loved the old moviehouses in their grand glory days, but in "Goodbye Dragon Inn," Tsai shows the beauty of the big theaters as their curtains slowly fall.

If you are familiar with the avant-garde films of Michael Snow or some of Werner Herzog's more minimalist pieces you'll be prepared for this experience. Snow's signature piece consists of a 45 minute zoom of an entire room into a postcard on a wall while drama occasionally occurs around the postcard.

The sense of space is amazing in this film. You really get the feeling of the enormous theater. The "plot" consists of a Japanese man cruising the theater as it seems are a number of other men who all disappear before the projected film is over. Also the box office woman's attempt to give half a steam bun to the absent projectionist. Nobody but two old men and a small child seem to be interested in the movie projected.

You have been warned. Also the director seems to have an obsession with men's rooms. The two old actors in the film are interesting however the director sets it up so you question whether the one with the small child is also cruising for men. I don't know if that was necessary.

It has been nearly two weeks since I saw Bu jian bu san (Goodbye, Dragon Inn) and I still can't get some of the images out of my mind. This is partly due to the fact that the director (Ming- liang Tsai) holds onto an image, a scene, long after, or before any action occurs. In doing so he insists the viewer bear witness to its own self re-presentation in the form of characters in a film they are watching.

Two of the finest moments in the film are moments where the camera is pointed back towards the mostly empty chairs of the cinema itself. In one, an actor who appeared in the original kung-fu film Dragon Inn watches a scene from the original. As the camera settles on his face, we are pulled ever closer, listening to the original's soundtrack while watching the actor as a receptive viewer. We are watching the emotions of time and change develop on his face. Finally, with his face in extreme close-up and the water glistening in his eyes with the film's light reflecting in them a single tear falls down his cheek.

Near the end of the film as the old classic has ended the camera is again pointed to the empty chairs of the cinema. There is no one there, then on the far side of the frame the ticket woman enters with bucket and mop. She walks across, up the stairs, back down and out the left side of the screen, literally walking off the frame as the camera remains motionless. He holds this shot for what many will argue is an interminable time. But he wants you to really take in this shot, consider what you are witness of, think about your own place now, viewing a film.

There is far more to this film than just these two scenes. They just exemplify the kind of artful ways this film explores the nature of action and reaction. What adds to this already complex and studied examination of cinema and the cinema viewing experience is the exquisite cinematography done by Ben-Bong Liao. If you love film, especially film that asks you to fully participate in the moment, then find a screening of this film and get lost in it.

There has been both glowing and dismissive reviews of this film.

If you want to be entertained and shown a good time, then this is not the film for you. This film is on the other end of the spectrum than the average action film.

This film lays down a subtle tapestry of images whereupon the characters drift about and interact (often without words) as they go about their separate quests or duties.

A quiet film with quiet rewards for those with patience to finish it.

Sometimes sparseness of action on the screen is needed. It's the difference between looking at a snap shot, and experiencing the stillness of the scene. The world is not always filled with action, it often has periods of reflection and meditation. Avoid using the Fast Forward function of your DVD player.

I am compelled to write a review of this movie that doesn't berate it, since most people seem to expect an action-packed and commercially viable film, not the artful and well done piece that it is. Liang's point is quite clear, and whether "nothing happens" or not is left up to the viewer's interpretation I guess. It's a short feature though, and anyone who is seriously interested in film should check this out. "Nobody goes to the movies anymore." With this line, we are told exactly what Liang is saying to us. The film is an ode to going to the movies. If you don't like going to the movies, then you shouldn't watch this film. If you do, then it should fill you up with the fuel that you need to get you through this piece.

I fully admit the longueurs where nothing happens for minutes in this film are trying. But for those of us who have spent too much of their lives in near-empty revival/foreign/indie theaters late at night, Goodbye, Dragon Inn DOES, by the end, resonate and make an impression. The empty arthouse theater is -- or maybe was, as so many are disappearing -- the one place a single person could be in the city and rarely, if ever, feel lonely. Even a walk in the park risks watching happy parents with their adorable kids. But in these theaters, you could be truly alone and happily protected; if the couple in front of you necking bothers you, you can move. It is an exquisite aloneness, completely absorbed by the work of Kurosawa or Rohmer, or some unheard-of director from eastern Romania. And this movie, at times, captures that feeling beautifully. But I had one big problem. In my hundreds of late nights in near-empty theaters, primarily those in New York and San Francisco, I never once was hit on by another man. Maybe it's because I wasn't looking for it, or just didn't give off that vibe; but I never saw any inkling of that activity. And so much of the film, with men spending forever standing side-by-the-side at the urinal and approaching each other as close as possible without touching, seemed mistaken. Of course, things may have been different in Taiwan, and movie theaters were the one place where gay men could meet freely. In big US cities, there simply may be too many other venues to accomplish that objective. But at least for me, these quasi-gay sequences subtracted significantly from the beauty of the film, not because I was offended, but because they seemed misplaced. Nevertheless, if slow, slow, SLOW sequences don't give you a problem, give it a try.

Unending static camera shots of nothing, empty halls, grimy back rooms. Extremely spare and absurdest dialog. Zero plot or point. About as much soul and warmth as a stone cold tile bathroom floor.

Lighting ranges from dim to dark and dank.

No character development, actually no characters, just zombie-like warm bodies occupying a few scenes.

A promising premise (the last day of an old Asian kung fu movie house) goes nowhere and elicits no emotion except extreme tedium.

Truly one of the worst theater experiences I have ever been subjected to.

In over a half century of movie-going, I don't recall ever seeing a film like this. Whether you love it or hate it--I loved it--depends entirely on individual tastes. So I could fully understand someone rating it as either a 10 or a 1, or anywhere in between.

The films happenings, or lack thereof, have been adequately described by other reviewers, so I won't go into that here. This is a film in which very little happens, but at the same time everything happens. It is elegiac, and a spirit of sadness and melancholy pervade the film. Many reviewers have criticized the length of some of the takes. A handicapped young woman who appears to have a brace on her leg--we can't see it, but we can hear it--climbs a long flight of stairs with excruciating slowness. The camera watches her from a distance as she climbs every step, with a 'clunk' every time her foot lands on a step. It sounds boring but it's ingenious. How better to empathize with this woman, to realize with a shock what an excruciating grind her daily life must be, and how lonely she must be. Indeed, everyone in the film appears to be lonely, and each has mechanisms for staving it off. Going to the movies is one of them.

One much-discussed scene has the camera, apparently from the vantage point of the screen, look out at the completely empty theater for what is probably three or four minutes. Absolutely nothing happens. But this scene is the essence of the film. It seems to be saying, "look at the history here. Look at how many thousands of people have come here to watch the movies, how many were made happy, if only for a couple of hours. And now it will be gone." We know in our gut that the theater will probably be torn down and replaced with a soulless mall, or a parking lot.

I'm sure this film brought back memories for people of a certain age. I remember as a child in the 1950s going to theaters very much like this one, paying 9 cents for admission, buying some popcorn and soda, and watching westerns or films noirs. And now those theaters, like the one in this film, are long since gone. Does anyone remember Jean Luc Godard in the 1960s talking about "cinema language?" A film like this one exemplifies perfectly what he must have meant. 9/10

I just watched this film in my World Cinema film class. It was very interesting I must say, but I appeared to be the only person in the class to have enjoyed it. Others said the movie was too slow, had no plot, and was boring.

I understand where they're coming from, this type of film has a specific target audience. It reminded me of a couple of Gus Van Sant's films, "Elephant" and "Gerry". They were slow-paced and very quiet, nothing really went on, but i love these kinds of movies. Would I recommend watching it? Yes. Would I recommend buying it? No. It's not the type of movie you'll watch more than once or twice. It does get sort of monotonous towards the end, with the extremely long cuts that never moved.

But there were some good qualities. For me, the movie was hilarious. It was definitely my kind of humor. There's the gimp girl that works at the theater who we are forced to watch walk up the stairs, limping all along the way. And then, my favorite, was the awkward Japanese boy who watched everybody in the theater. the uncomfortable situations he's put in our hilarious. We think something is going to happen each time, but nothing ever does. But still, that's why it's so hilarious. Definitely not the type of humor for everyone though. If you're the kind that gets bored easily then you'll be too frustrated to appreciate the humor, b/c chances are you'll turn the film off. There was some beautiful composition and cinematography. the different camera angles and distances are interesting for the most part. but again, this is probably something more for film students than the average viewer.

So, overall I think this movie is worth a look. Depending on who you are, you may find it funny, but you may find it sad b/c of how lonely the characters are, esp. the Japanese boy and the gimp. This film will make you uncomfortable and you may squirm at times. If you like that in a film then I'd recommend this.

Nothing happens in this movie. Well, almost nothing. You get to watch three guys urinate for a few minutes. That's about as exciting as it gets. That's not all though; no. You get to watch a cripple walk slowly for about a fifth of the film. She trudges up stairs and through hallways tragically and with singular non-purposefulness. You get to watch people watching people watch movies. The movies they watch are better than watching them watch the movies. Skip watching this film and watch the movies that the people in the film are watching instead. Those at least look somewhat entertaining. I would recommend this movie to anyone who wants to shoot themselves in the head.

"Good Bye, Dragon Inn (Bu san)" is something of a Taiwanese "Cinema Paradiso" and "Last Picture Show" in its love of old movie theaters and evoking the unfulfilled longings we project onto movies and their showcases.

We take refuge (and I have no idea how we were supposed to know that one of the characters we are following in is a Japanese tourist, per the IMDb plot description) during a rain storm on the last night at a huge theater, and the camera slowly leads us through every inch of the place.

The vast scale of the place is brought home to us (and it will have less impact when not seen on a big screen) as virtually every inch is navigated painfully by a lame employee, clumping (as we only hear ambient sounds) up and down all those stairs, from the red velveteen seats around every nook and cranny and down long hallways and seedy passageways.

I don't know if only a Western viewer thinks at first one character is a pedophile or another a transvestite, as the theater certainly looks like the old ones that were in Times Square, or if writer/director Ming-liang Tsai is toying with all of us, as he brings other assignation attempts closer (in what must be the longest time any men have ever spent leaning against a urinal), but they are as unreal as the movie-within-a-movie, the swordplay flick "Dragon Inn" which is just a bit more stilted and corny than the current "Warriors of Heaven and Earth (Tian di ying xiong)."

There is one especially lovely moment, within beautiful cinematography throughout, of reaction to the flickering screen when the employee pauses in her rounds to look up at the huge image of the warrior princess and shares our view of the screen with her. Amusingly, the only fulfilled feelings are hunger, as various characters noisily eat a wide variety of refreshments.

The projectionist is as much an unseen power as Herr Drosselmeier in "The Nutcracker," as we don't even see him until the theater is almost ready to close. He is as oblivious to interacting with real people as every other member of the sparse audience.

The major events in the film are when two characters even acknowledge each other's existence, let alone speak the only three lines or so of spoken dialogue in the entire film, reiterating what we've seen visually -- "No one goes to the movies anymore." The closing nostalgic pop song is jarringly intrusive at first to this quiet film, but the lyrics are very appropriate.

No spoilers here. If you read the synopsis you know pretty much everything there is to know about the plot, or the absence thereof.

Rather than seeing a story played out to entertain you, watching this film is more like meditating. If you wait for something to happen, you will become frustrated. But if you allow yourself to be carried by the flow of the film, you will become utterly relaxed and aware of the passing of time, in a Zen sense.

If you like slow movies, long shots and melancholy, and you get the chance to watch this in a cinema, I highly recommend you do so. It is quite the experience.

A tone poem on the nature of cinema as an entity, an art-form and a place, Ming-Liang Tsai's "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" is unlike almost any other film you will see. To say it will appeal mostly to people who love cinema may not necessarily be true for here is a film that challenges what many people believe cinema should be; entertainment perhaps, something communal and if we view it as a means of expression surely that expression should be more universal than what we get here and yet for many of us, "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" will strike us as being intensely personal. For many, this is a film that will stir up what drew us to cinema in the first place.

It's almost totally silent, reminding us that in its infancy cinema was silent. We hear snatches of dialogue from the film within the film, (the martial arts classic "Dragon Inn"), that is being shown in the cinema where almost all of 'the action' takes place but there are no sub-titles. There are only a handful of characters in this cavernous auditorium but they don't communicate. If there is any unification between these people it's through the medium of cinema. There is the lame woman who acts as ticket collector and cleaner, the projectionist, an elderly man and his grandson and a number of gay men who cruise the cinema for sex, (though far from explicit these scenes have a remarkable homo-erotic charge making this an essential gay film), and perhaps a ghost.

You could say, of course, that few of these people are there to see the film but were Duane and Sonny there to watch "Red River" in "The Last Picture Show" or was it just a ritual that has to be adhered to as part of a larger scheme, (in their case, growing up; here staving off loneliness). It's also a film about looking; seeing this in a cinema not unlike the one on screen we become part of the experience and it is clear from the extracts from "Dragon Inn" that Ming-Liang Tsai is very much in love with movies.

Nothing really happens and the film moves at a snail's pace yet this is the least boring of art-house movies; it's an immersive experience and whether you see it alone or with others, if you have any feeling for cinema at all, you can't fail but to be touched by it though I suspect, for many, it will be like watching paint dry.

I am an oddly big fan of Slow Cinema. With an effective enough atmosphere, a work of Slow Cinema can be an immersive, absorbent experience for me, and 'Goodbye, Dragon Inn' almost perfectly fits this bill. While you could say a couple of shots run for a bit too long and the film occasionally borders on tedium, I feel that its overall impact is unexpectedly exciting in a way. A meditation on cinema and the passage of time, the film uses sparse dialogue, beautiful cinematography, subtilely lush sound design, and the setting of a haunted movie theatre to chilling effects. Not to mention, 'Goodbye, Dragon Inn' is also a very funny movie. Its dry sense of humour is able to break the possible entry into boredom by providing quite a few genuine laughs. Much of the comedy perfectly captures the subtle, awkward tensions that every so often casually pop up in the average person's daily life. At the same time, the film also gives off a rather melancholic vibe interspersed with genuinely unsettling moments. By the end of the film, I even feel vaguely uplifted, and I'm not even sure why exactly, there's just something about it all that provokes unexpectedly strong emotional responses. All of these feelings miraculously bloom from many extremely long, drawn out shots that sometimes feel almost painfully mundane, and yet it continuously draws my attention throughout, finally ending with one of the most enigmatically hypnotic and gorgeous final shots in cinema history.

Subtle and minimalistic. The film simply speaks without words. There are probably less than 8 lines of script in the entire film, some lines being one or two words, and that's part of what makes this film so special. Tsai has a knack for setting the camera down in all the right places in this dingy, dark theater of a setting. The night of emptiness among a handful of characters somehow kept me engaged until the very end. Not to say that I was patient throughout the whole thing. There are several sequences where literally nothing happens. When I was watching the DVD, my girlfriend came into the room and asked, "why are you staring at a paused screen?" That gives you an idea of some stretches in the film. But overall, this is a cinematic work of art. Definitely a film I'd consider re-watchable.

I think about the title of my review, it is too generous. This is not "one of the worst movies of all time" because this is not even a movie. It's some kind of joke or prank.

I like all kinds of movies. I have watched many arthouse dramas, i don't mind if a movie is slow-paced even uneventful as long as there is something to enjoy, let's say the acting performances, the symbolisms, the cinematography, dream-like sequences etc. BU SAN is not just slow and uneventful. There is nothing here resembling remotely to an artistic creation. Basically, there is nothing, period. Visiting the rest room or cleaning up the house is literally a more exciting experience than watching this movie.

I have reviewed hundreds of movies. I don't enjoy being so harsh. But this made me angry.

Seeing this as part of the London Film Festival I had few expectations of the movie and was initially pleased to see the large cinema was a almost a sell-out. However, by the end of this 82 minute feature approximately a quarter of the audience had walked out and to be honest I am surprised that so many remained. Bravely, the film appears to ignore most conventions for film-making; dialogue, narrative and character development are rarely in evidence. The long still shots and selective use of sound (focusing primarily on footsteps and 'small' sounds from within the scene) created an eerie atmosphere but the film's content failed to capitalise on this platform to generate further interest in the characters or development of the themes.

Other films and directors (Tarkovsky) have created genuinely unique movies which have required significant commitment from the audience. However, on this occasion the director strays too far, the film demands too much from the viewer and offers scant return for this time. It reminded me of the experience of seeing a Russian film of the early 90s, The Stone (dir Sokurov), both these films require significant concentration and commitment from their viewers yet for me they both signify the excesses of arthouse cinema.

What can be said about Ming-liang Tsai's "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" ?

"Brilliant", "Genuine", "Honest", "Heartbreaking" are some of the adjectives that come to mind.

First of all, let me state that this is not a film for everyone. People with an attention span of 30 seconds should stay away from this film for they will hate it with all their heart. But, if you are open and sensitive to time, distance and atmosphere, this is your film.

Never have corridors, rooms and hallways felt so sad and lonely in Cinema History. Every frame cries with sadness, loneliness and memories.

In "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" Ming-liang asks us to remember. To feel. He wishes to recapture the textures, the air, the shadows, the silence. He invites us to remember these things.

Shiang-chyi Chen fleshes out another brilliant performance (following her performance in Ming-liang's "The Passageway is Gone", another masterpiece, by the way). She gives us one of the most heartbreaking, honest and haunting performances in recent Cinema.

Instead of falling into the predictable "Art House" category, Ming-liang delivers what is a funny, moving and unforgettable film. Every single detail, every single performance, is a tiny jewel worth more than any grand or epic scene Hollywood could possible deliver.

Every single echoing step from Shiang-chyi Chen's character feels like the last heart beats of a lonely and broken heart. "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" floods with heart and warmth. In the end, it is a pessimistic film - but with one small shining light of hope. And it is focusing on that light that the film closes its curtains.

Rejoice, Ming-liang Tsai. Your latest film has just sneaked in into the Top 100 Films Ever. Quite easily, in fact. "GDI" is also, the Best Film of the Decade, as it is.

I hope that somehow, a DVD is released in Western countries.

Or else I will personally travel to Taiwan in order to buy a copy.

To sum it up - one does not come out unchanged from "Goodbye, Dragon Inn".

I can certainly understand others comments about this film being dull and uninteresting. However, I find it refreshing that a director has taken the risk in creating a film as neutral as this. At a glance, the plot is extremely simple. But I find each of the characters to be intriguing as they each have so many tells. I also enjoyed the parallels between the film in progress and the interaction between viewers in the theater. All sense of emotion has been left at the door in the creation of this film, and the soundtrack is barely existent. The photography was phenomenal, and the transitions between scenes were fantastic. I suggest you not think of this as a movie at all, but rather a work of art.