Why now is the per­fect time to watch Good­bye, Drag­on Inn

It’s not the first time that the mass extinc­tion of the old-school pic­ture house has been fore­cast. Yet in the wake of a sec­ond round of coro­n­avirus lock­downs, forc­ing cin­e­mas through­out the UK to tem­porar­i­ly shut­ter, with some major chains such as Cineworld and Odeon clos­ing all of their venues indef­i­nite­ly, the future looks unde­ni­ably bleak. All the while, detrac­tors beg the ques­tion: who needs the mul­ti­plex when we’ve got Net­flix at home?

Tai­wanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang explored these same themes with potent effect back in 2003, after the own­er of a the­atre on the out­skirts of Taipei advised him that the venue would soon be demol­ished due to lack of busi­ness. Feel­ing a sense of loss hav­ing being remind­ed of the long-lost the­atres of his child­hood, Tsai opt­ed to rent out the venue to shoot a film. Today, with it hav­ing just received a long-over­due Blu-ray restora­tion, Good­bye, Drag­on Inn feels more pow­er­ful than ever.

Open­ing with a dat­ed orches­tral motif that itself seems plucked from a time long since passed (imag­ine the 20^th Cen­tu­ry Fox fan­fare played through a walkie-talkie), a sense of long­ing is imme­di­ate­ly estab­lished as the film opens inside the cav­ernous Fu-Ho Grand The­atre. An impres­sive and vast audi­to­ri­um in its hey­day, it has long since begun to show its age. The walls are cracked, and crum­bling; the toi­let atten­dant has a heavy limp, and a black cat flees as water from a storm begins to flood the foyer.

Inside, mean­while, the epic wux­ia film Drag­on Inn, by Chi­nese film­mak­er King Hu, plays for the last time on the big screen. On its ini­tial release in 1967, the film broke box-office records in mul­ti­ple East Asian ter­ri­to­ries – but here it plays out in a near-emp­ty room.

The few patrons present have lit­tle inter­est in the fea­ture itself, and even less respect for the the­atre. Two women loud­ly chew water­mel­on seeds in one of the back rows, while a wan­der­ing man makes homo­sex­u­al advances in the cor­ri­dors. One patron puts his dirty feet up on the seat in front of him; anoth­er spreads rumours that the build­ing is haunted.

The mus­ings of these name­less movie­go­ers form lit­tle in the way of a nar­ra­tive, but through mas­ter­ful cin­e­matog­ra­phy, and an evi­dent admi­ra­tion for the the­atre itself, Tsai man­ages to con­jure gen­uine won­der­ment across his film’s lean 82-minute runtime.

Good­bye, Drag­on Inn is a beau­ti­ful film. With scarce dia­logue, few cam­era move­ments, and an aver­age shot length of 55 sec­onds, it offers a deeply con­tem­pla­tive med­i­ta­tion on the for­got­ten mag­ic of the cin­e­ma as an insti­tu­tion. Whether observ­ing a stroll down the well-trod­den cor­ri­dors, a lone ush­er com­plet­ing menial tasks, or sim­ply the dark blan­ket of the audi­to­ri­um itself, each shot is com­posed to encour­age a full inges­tion of the archi­tec­ture and atmos­phere of this ancient tem­ple of exhibition.

The film has been dubi­ous­ly lumped in as an exam­ple of ​“slow cin­e­ma”, but this is far too dull a descrip­tor to effec­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cate the pow­er of Tsai’s engag­ing style. As this stun­ning restora­tion illus­trates, a sense of ener­gy is pal­pa­ble in the strik­ing colours that light up each shot, from the flick­er­ing yel­low foy­er lights to the pas­tel-blue bath­room tiles, bright red cin­e­ma seats and the green, paint-flecked con­crete walls.

And while a rare moment of mon­tage offers a sense of big-screen antic­i­pa­tion at the film’s open­ing (sev­er­al shots of the cin­e­ma screen are edit­ed togeth­er as Drag­on Inn begins in the the­atre), the film’s most pow­er­ful image has the oppo­site effect. In a cli­mac­tic scene, the screen­ing ends and the lights come up in the Fu-Ho The­atre, leav­ing a fixed cam­era to observe the emp­ty seats for a full five min­utes in a pro­found dis­play of loss, even sadness.

A FIPRESCI Award-win­ner at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val in 2003, Good­bye, Drag­on Inn feels even more potent today than it did upon ini­tial release. It’s a film that makes you yearn for those imper­fect spaces that are feel­ing increas­ing­ly out of reach – not only the cin­e­mas; but also the con­cert halls, the decay­ing Vic­to­ri­an pubs, the dive bars and even the greasy spoon cafes.

In a post­mod­ern twist, this reis­sue of Good­bye, Drag­on Inn brings new life to both a for­got­ten King Hu clas­sic, and Tsai’s love let­ter to the Fu-Ho The­atre itself. It’s a state­ment on the cycli­cal and trans­for­ma­tive nature of film – one that offers a hope­ful sen­ti­ment when con­sid­er­ing the future of cin­e­mas in 2020 and beyond. For UK cin­ema­go­ers, a director’s state­ment from the film’s orig­i­nal press kit feels par­tic­u­lar­ly prescient.

“Some­times, I see [them] in my dreams,” Tsai says of the cin­e­mas he would vis­it as a child in his home­town of Kuch­ing. While they have long since dis­ap­peared, it was his warm mem­o­ries of these places that inspired him to make some­thing new. ​“One the­atre,” he recalls, ​“was called the Odeon.”

Good­bye, Drag­on Inn is now avail­able on Blu-ray and DVD via Sec­ond Run.