Anyone who had a special place for movies, especially if it's gone, will be able to see that theater in the Fu Ho. Slarek becomes absorbed by the film's lingering focus on suggestion and small character details and salutes the quality of Second Run's recent Blu-ray release. The very definition of a film that will starkly divide opinion, Goodbye, Dragon Inn is likely to prove frustrating and unsatisfying viewing for some, but if you can adjust to its slow pace and fascination with stillness and small moments, then there’s a good chance it will really work for you.

If you watched it and felt nothing but exasperation, as some definitely have, then you’re probably thinking that this would be a good thing. Reminded of the super-cinemas and the poetic King Hu films of his youth, he shot a scene in the theater and premiered the film there. While there, I just had to pay this venue a visit and saw Fukasaku Kinji’s 1966 Hokkaido no Abare-Ryu – without the aid of English subtitles, no less – and was seriously impressed by the whole experience. Scott of The New York Times praised the film, writing, " Goodbye, Dragon Inn has a quiet, cumulative magic, whose source is hard to identify.It doesn't tell a story, really, but conveys what it's like to walk along empty city streets on a rainy night, alone. A Japanese tourist seeks a homosexual encounter; Chen Chao-jung brushes off his advance and tells him the place is haunted.

It’s also worth noting that not a lot happens during the course of that running time, at least in terms of on-screen action, and that the first line of dialogue doesn’t occur until just over 40 minutes into the film.It’s not hard to see parallels with the cinema of Béla Tarr, another filmmaker who favours lingering on images for far longer than conventional wisdom dictates, a technique that peaked in the seven-hour Sátántangó. Its lack of narrative and home video aesthetic is likely to infuriate as many as it intrigues, but while I understand how easily it might frustrate, I nonetheless had no problem sticking with it and found myself speculating not just on the possible backstory for the the woman’s current situation, but on the very making of the film itself.

Madam Butterfly (2009, 36 mins): world home-video premiere of Tsai s remarkable modern-day interpretation of the classic story. A meager audience, the remaining few staff, and perhaps even a ghost or two, watch King Hu’s wuxia classic Dragon Inn—each haunted by memories and desires evoked by cinema itself. As I emerged, I remarked to my friend what a wonderful resource this was to have so close to his home, to which he sadly responded, “I know, I love to come here, but not enough other people do nowadays and so it’s closing next month.As someone for whom walking has become a problem in recent years, I am perhaps more sensitive to this aspect and really felt for the cashier when her shyness keeps her from handing the cake to a man to whom she is clearly attracted. He seemingly first enters the cinema to shelter from the rain, but once inside his attempt to watch the film is disturbed by the noisy food eating of the couple a few seats down in the row behind him. I will admit that this last bit of information is not revealed by the film itself until its final scene, but I can’t see that doing so here is going to act as a spoiler because it’s been stated in every synopsis I’ve seen, including the one on the cover of this Blu-ray release from Second Run. I’ve no doubt that an argument has been made that if that film was re-edited to bring the shot length down to a functional norm then it would probably run for only a couple of hours.

An expansion Tsai Ming-Laing’s contribution to a project launched at the 2008 Lucca Film Festival in Tuscany in which twenty ‘experimental’ filmmakers were invited to make five-minute shorts to mark 150th anniversary of Giacomo Puccini.

In the only fast cut sequence in the film, the cashier is momentarily mesmerised by the fighting skills of the on-screen movie’s female action star Shangguan Lingfeng, the rapid back-and-forth cutting between the two hinting at the cashier’s dreams for life that fate has denied her. And while it could be argued that while up until the current pandemic put many of them at risk of permanent closure, cinemas in the UK were still attracting sizeable audiences, venues like the one in Goodbye, Dragon Inn (which was shot in a real cinema that was was on the verge of closure) that screen older movies for a specialist audience have become altogether rarer, at least outside of major cities. Why, I wondered on occasion, is this image being held on for this length, past when it has not only done its job but underscored it multiple times? After the premiere, Tsai approached the owner to shoot an entire film there, fearing the soon-to-close theater would be lost forever.