Tsai Ming-Liang and Lee Kang-Sheng on a joint career in filmmaking

It’s often the silence in the absence of vocal­ized emo­tion or expla­na­tion that speaks loud­est in the works of Tsai-Ming Liang. The silence of the final loy­al patrons appre­ci­at­ing one last movie in a dying the­ater in Good­bye, Drag­on Inn, or the lust of two peo­ple in love for one anoth­er in Days. Through the lens of the cam­era and the end­less emo­tions that can be read on the face of the best-in-career per­for­mances he rou­tine­ly brings out of his actors, par­tic­u­lar­ly his long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Lee Kang-Sheng, actions speak loud­er than words.

So sit­ting down and hear­ing the direc­tor speak about his films and career in his own words with depth and detail is almost unusu­al. While the flashi­ness of Gin­za can feel removed from the set­tings and con­tent of many of the director’s work, Tsai Ming-Liang was in Tokyo and the lux­u­ri­ous office and shop­ping com­plex in the heart of the area to com­mem­o­rate a ret­ro­spec­tive of the Hong Kong director’s career. Rang­ing from his most beloved fea­tures to doc­u­men­taries to rarely-screened short films, this was a vocal cel­e­bra­tion for a man of few words.

And he was not alone. After all, could you real­ly cel­e­brate his fea­ture film career with­out Lee Kang-Sheng, an actor who, hav­ing been scout­ed from the streets by Tsai Ming-Liang in the pro­duc­tion of his TV film Boys, has col­lab­o­rat­ed and sat at the heart of every pro­duc­tion the direc­tor has made since. The career of one is defined by the oth­er, so any ret­ro­spec­tive of one is also a ret­ro­spec­tive of the oth­er. Like two sides of the same coin, they were here in Tokyo, where he first made his mark on the inter­na­tion­al stage.

‘It was at the Tokyo Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val where I was first dis­cov­ered while I was still a rook­ie direc­tor,’ he explained, recall­ing the appear­ance of his first fea­ture, Rebels of the Neon God, which won the Young Cin­e­ma Com­pe­ti­tion Bronze Award in 1993. Thanks to the award here Tai­wanese cin­e­ma became more pop­u­lar in the region and more of his lat­er works would sim­i­lar­ly make their bow at the event.

‘Before the debut of my first fea­ture I’d been direct­ing things like TV and plays. I’ve gained a lot of con­fi­dence in my work since then, but they aren’t com­mer­cial at all and aren’t easy to mar­ket, so I think the rea­son any­one ever saw my work back then and it was able to be seen by the world was because it won an award. I was grate­ful at the time, but I nev­er thought at the time I would be get­ting spe­cial screen­ings like this.’

Part of the appeal of Tsai Ming-Liang’s work is his delib­er­ate pace that observes its char­ac­ters in and with silence. It’s an appar­ent fea­ture of all his works as he lets his actors inhab­it the space they exist in and live through it, rather than dri­ving his char­ac­ters along a set path where his set­tings become loca­tions on a jour­ney rather than a lived-in space. Still, it’s a style that only became more pro­nounced as the cre­ator grew in con­fi­dence over the years and gained more expe­ri­ence, with his movies fol­low­ing the release of Good­bye, Drag­on Inn in par­tic­u­lar being notable for their rel­a­tive silence.

For this film, the director’s love of cin­e­ma as an artis­tic medi­um and an out­let for cre­ative expres­sion influ­enced a style that has increas­ing­ly come to define his career and his work. ​‘I love cin­e­ma and I love this medi­um, so I’m always think­ing about how to take advan­tage of what this medi­um offers. When I make a film I’m usu­al­ly think­ing about how to for about one or two years before that, think­ing about what the movie should be, what style and look it should have and will tell the best sto­ry, things like that. Not the busi­ness side of things.

‘For exam­ple, in Good­bye Drag­on Inn the main char­ac­ter isn’t the peo­ple in the cin­e­ma but the the­ater itself, so I was very slow and pon­der­ing in order to express the space and unique nature of the cin­e­ma. It was that way of cre­at­ing the film that brought it to the atten­tion of so many with­in the film world. With the con­cept of the film the aim had been to cre­ate some­thing about how art and ideas can come togeth­er in one place like this. My films are pri­mar­i­ly dri­ven by the image, as well, and this caused me to empha­size more on the depths found with­in each image, lead­ing me to more freely try out new styles mov­ing forwards.’

Beyond the depths of his images comes a sin­gle con­stant that remains through all of his films: his col­lab­o­ra­tion with Lee Kang-Sheng. Hav­ing dis­cov­ered him on the street while he worked in an arcade, their mutu­al work togeth­er on Boys sparked an over-30 year col­lab­o­ra­tion that has seen him star in every film Ming-Liang has direct­ed in sub­se­quent years. ​‘It felt like des­tiny meet­ing Lee Kang-Sheng,’ he admit­ted while talk­ing about their relationship.

His meet­ing and the chances he had to observe the actor dur­ing the film of his ear­ly TV and fea­ture works made him want to reflect his life and his own cir­cum­stances and tell sto­ries that cap­tured Lee’s inner mono­logue or gave space to por­tray him­self most clear­ly on screen.

‘[While work­ing on my first work with him] I paid a lot of atten­tion at the time to his home sit­u­a­tion and the cir­cum­stances he was in. After cre­at­ing my first pic­ture with him he became ill, and that ill­ness was incor­po­rat­ed into the film I was mak­ing at the time. With my fifth fea­ture, What Time is it There, the film is about a young man whose father had died, and I want­ed to write about those and his feel­ings sur­round­ing that. I always want to cap­ture how feel­ings change over time and to cap­ture it in Lee’s face. That’s my pur­pose in mak­ing films.’

Per­haps it’s fit­ting that through the inter­view until that point and through a lot of Tsai Ming-Liang’s answers about his work that Lee Kang-Sheng him­self had sat most­ly silent­ly, like an observ­er over the dis­cus­sion of a career that the two togeth­er have shared. The desire to work togeth­er comes from a mutu­al respect of the other’s abil­i­ties and deep-root­ed love for the medi­um and its his­to­ry, and it’s what dri­ves their dual per­for­mances behind and in front of the camera.

‘When movies first began they were silent, they had no lines, and I’m per­son­al­ly not some­one who talks all that much either,’ pon­dered Lee. ​‘I like iso­la­tion. Peo­ple often ask me if I’m lone­ly, but I’m not, I like it. I’m not a fan of places with lots of peo­ple min­gling around and mak­ing noise. Tsai Ming-liang is the same, and he also likes the iso­la­tion, and we both pre­fer these qui­eter places and movies.

As we’ve made pic­tures togeth­er we’ve had these shared expe­ri­ences and views, we don’t real­ly like music, and it’s why these movies rarely have any sound and are most­ly silent. In Days, Non is from Laos, we don’t under­stand each other’s lan­guages, but they’re so con­nect­ed there’s no need to under­stand their con­ver­sa­tion, so we made a more silent and inti­mate feature.’

It’s a mutu­al under­stand­ing of their shared world­views and work togeth­er, and the way their careers have inter­twined so close­ly, that leaves their part­ner­ship in films and the career of Tsai Ming-liang such a unique one with­in mod­ern cin­e­ma. One career wouldn’t exist with­out the oth­er, and the works which sprout­ed from their chance meet­ing and part­ner­ship would nev­er have come to be.

‘If I hadn’t met Lee Kang-sheng, the movies I make would not be the same as they are now. I prob­a­bly would have made a lot more nor­mal movies with a lot of music and dia­logue. The cir­cum­stances would have been so dif­fer­ent. But I learned from Lee his way of life, his rhythm, which had a mas­sive influ­ence on me and led me to mak­ing more truth­ful films.’

For Tsai Ming-liang, his career is an obser­va­tion of one actor, and the expe­ri­ences and lives he has dis­cov­ered and desired to write about through his own life and observ­ing his friend and col­lab­o­ra­tor of three decades. When Lee was ill, they cre­at­ed a film where he was ill that the direc­tor admit­ted he feels brought out the actor’s best performance.

As the sun set in the heart of Gin­za, a fes­ti­val cel­e­brat­ed the career of a direc­tor with a named ret­ro­spec­tive, yet the real­i­ty is a decades-long refrain cel­e­brat­ing arguably Asian and Tai­wanese cinema’s strongest col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ner­ship. It’s a col­lab­o­ra­tion nei­ther wish to end, and they stat­ed their plans to con­tin­ue work­ing into the future. There’s more of this world to observe, after all.