Goodbye, Dragon Inn [Blu-ray] [2020]

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Central to this approach is a young male Japanese tourist (Kiyonobu Mitamura) whose actions and observations weave a connecting tread to some of the other patrons at this poorly attended swansong screening. A meagre 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. This is where the lingering shot at the end of Goodbye, Dragon Inn of the empty auditorium really hit home, acting as it did as a reminder that sometimes you really don’t fully appreciate what you’ve got until it’s gone.

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.In essence, Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang’s 2003 feature, Goodbye, Dragon Inn, is a record of the final screening at a large but run-down Taipei cinema before it permanently shuts its doors. Madam Butterfly (2009, 36 mins): world home-video premiere of Tsai s remarkable modern-day interpretation of the classic story.

This is an excellent extra that genuinely expanded my appreciation of the film itself, though it should be noted that the interview was shot outside and occasionally does battle with wind noise. Instead she places it quietly in the entrance to the projection booth for him to hopefully find and gratefully consume, then slowly makes her way back to ground level. We only watch a single task being performed in real time during the course of the entire first third of this film, but it not only makes compellingly clear – in a way that no short montage could – how crucial the role of fresh water is to the couple’s existence, but vividly illustrates the hard work and dedication that is required to keep the crops that are their life and livelihood watered.There weren’t many of us in attendance, but the cinema was immaculately kept, the seats were comfortable, the screen was a good size and the condition of the print being screened was close to miraculous. Scott of The New York Times praised the film, writing, " Goodbye, Dragon Inn has a quiet, cumulative magic, whose source is hard to identify. 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. When the woman approaches the ticket office, for instance, the angle chosen suggests the ticket seller was not in on the gag and was thus expected not to sell the woman a ticket because she is just short of the required fare, but when seller is encouraged by others to accept this lower payment she agrees, and a reason for declining this offer then has to be quickly manufactured, or at least that’s the way it seems. That doesn’t mean I’ll like them, but I’ll certainly give the filmmaker credit for trying something that others might not even have considered.

Don't worry about spoilers (none here, but don't worry about others'), because not much happens in the movie. Presented here in a new digital restoration, Goodbye, Dragon Inn is more ravishing and hypnotic than ever. Given my initial uncertainty, I was surprised how involved I became in it and ultimately how much I gleaned from what is only suggested by what occurs on screen, and was certainly caught out by its poetic evocation of childhood memories, its moments of almost absurdist humour and its touching final moments.If it seems as though I’m dancing around not just my own opinion of the film but what happens within it, you can put this down to the fact that Goodbye, Dragon Inn is not an easy film to start making even close to definitive statements about.