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    F I L M - P H I L O S O P H Y
    Internet Salon (ISSN 1466-4615)
    http://www.film-philosophy.com

    Vol. 4  No. 23, October 2000

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    Gaik Cheng Khoo

    Tsai Ming-liang: Defining What's Real



_Tsai Ming-liang_
Jean-Pierre Rehm, Olivier Joyard, and Daniele Riviere
Paris: Dis Voir, 1999
ISBN: 2-906571-90-3
127 pps.

This book consists of two poetic essays and a revealing interview that
follows up on the thematics that the two essays suggest. Actually, the
book's organic feel suggests that the interview was conducted first and
used as a basis for the other two essays.

Young award-winning Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang is a fairly new name
in Asian New Wave cinema who made a name for himself in the West with only
four features in the 1990s. [1] While there have been interviews and
reviews of his works in numerous international publications and on the
internet, this is the first book about his work. If there are any
definitive writings that advance our understanding of Tsai's works, this is
it. I found the meaning of _The River_ (1997) and _Rebels of a Neon God_
(1992), which I had seen several years ago, elusive, and came away only
with a sense of the banal and familiar (i.e. typical daily rituals, the
internal decor of living and bathroom spaces, plastic consumer goods),
myself being a Chinese-Malaysian who grew up in Malaysia. This book sheds
light on the film for me by its appreciation of Tsai's visuals and
philosophical vision, though at some point it seems to make much more of
the films' poeticism and the filmmaker's presumed knowledge of Chinese
aesthetics and philosophy than the auteur himself ever imagined.

>From the book, it would seem that the best way to define Tsai's works is to
think of them as poetic realism delivered in pure visual form. To begin,
Rehm reminds readers of the relevance of Walter Benjamin's statement,
'cinema in place of narration', with regard to Tsai's cinema. Quoting
Benjamin -- if 'what we want [is] a new precision and a new imprecision
joined together in a single narrative jargon' -- Rehm remarks that Tsai
certainly provides this by being 'engaged in the patient work of developing
this scientific, highly clandestine, precise and vague language, free from
any backward or provincial claims' (10). In fact, if the goal is to show
instead of tell, 'to lay waste to the previous precision of description, of
time, of inner life' in order to 'obtain a new objectivity', then its true
ambition is focused 'above all on a new imprecision powerful enough to
destroy the traditional precision' (10). Rehm uses this notion of
imprecision to discuss the inability to categorize or recognize Tsai's
works within modernist film history and philosophy. For example, in terms
of methods and style, Tsai's anti-narrative technique allows him to avoid
imitating Godard and Straub (10), and for the characters to 'become puppets
graced with inner life' (21). The author formulates the sections in the
essay as questions with expected negative answers: Where are the corpses,
the suffering, the real, the Buddha, music? Tsai's works obviously defies
generic categorization, neither being thrillers, melodramas, documentaries,
nor straight musicals (i.e. _The Hole_), and lacking exoticism and the
authority found in religious faith or political ideology. Yet, both Rehm
and Joyard persist in trying to categorize his work, picking up on his
comic humour, and bestowing the highest compliment on him by stating that
he 'may well be the last of the burlesque silent film directors [whose] new
genre could be called lively expressionism, or light fantastic' (76).

How to interpret the 'new language' that Tsai creates seems to be a
problem. Part of the difficulty in interpretation stems from the
filmmaker's style. His films have very little dialogue, no traditional
narrative arch (indeed, not even much narrative, really), seemingly
ultra-long takes of alienated, uncommunicative characters doing very little
within their urban living spaces. All of this and more force the writers in
this book to formulate some kind of connected meaning but always at least
two degrees away. For example, Rehm discusses Tsai's use of choreography
and musical numbers in _The Hole_ (8), but instead of discussing how Tsai
innovates the form/genre, Rehm can only claim that it is the musical's
'desire for innocence' (31), its desire to remedy the harm done by
intrusive talk that dictated its norms on the image, that Tsai is trying to
replicate. Moreover, in relation to sound, or rather non-sound, Rehm says,
'Tsai pays no homage to the beauty of silence' (34), unlike other Asian
directors Ozu, Kitano, and Hou Hsiao-hsien, for whom silence indicates
plenitude, guarantees the secret authenticity of interaction, and openly
defies words with their light, images, and action. In addition, Tsai seems
to undermine the logic behind the use of the sequential shot: 'Instead of
taking the time for a story to begin, develop and progressively invade the
proposed space until bound to the necessity of the construction, characters
arrive awkwardly, one after the other, like clumsy UFOs' (25). Throughout
the films we learn little about the characters' pasts, and have only the
faintest inkling as to their future.

The themes Tsai Ming-liang uses paradoxically confound and yet invite
decoding. The writers in the book have a field day in explaining the theme
of water or fluid that, pardon the expression, *flows* throughout Tsai's
films: rain, leaky pipes, tears, piss, sweat, characters in full bathtubs,
characters drinking water, splashing, floating corpse in a river. Tears and
incessantly flowing water, according to Rehm, establish the final form of
solidarity (a paradoxical one) between things and beings (24). (This is
especially pertinent as bodies, material forms, the spatial environment,
and how they all interact, is a curious point that everyone, including the
director, discusses.) Daniel Riviere, the interviewer, points out that
water in Chinese symbolism represents chaos, but that Tsai uses water in a
different way. He shows external water (rain) and water inside the house
(waste water flowing back in). But Tsai doesn't make any distinction
between internal and external water except to say that water is essential
to life and, in general, 'symbolises love' (113). He explains that his
characters are always thirsty and drinking, like 'plants which are short of
water' (114). He acknowledges that they are 'never particularly well
adjusted because they lack something' (114), namely love, as represented by
water.

This leads to a lot of questions in the reader's mind: if water represents
love, do May's tears at the end of _Vive l'Amour_ symbolize her loneliness
and fear of her inability to love? [2] Moreover, his characters are lonely
individuals who hardly speak to one another, and the love scenes permeate
sex rather than emotion. In fact, the director admits that sex is the most
intimate part of his characters' lives: 'Personally, I think it is easier
to have a sex life in modern society than to have a loving relationship'
(100). Yet, although he agrees with David Walsh that Taipei is
'money-conscious, alienating and emotionally-starved', he also states that
Taipei is a very complicated city where 'everybody is struggling within
their own minds. In actuality, it is a city with a lot of genuine feeling'.
[3] Hence, one can surmise that it is the inner life of the characters that
Tsai Ming-liang is interested in exploring.

The element of liquid also manifests as bodily fluids and secretions. And
the filmmaker's focus on the body, its functions and rituals, is something
all critics can agree on. Again, the interrelationship between physical
bodies, water, and spaces crops up in Tsai's rather facetious explanation
of why he shows characters pissing; aside from the fact that this is a part
of our daily lives, it was also important for him to find out whether, for
example, in _The Hole_, women close the door or leave it open when they are
alone in a room and want to piss (114-5)! But on a more serious note,
Joyard theorizes: 'The body with its infinite variety of relations, which
is not limited by its substance, that touches everything, is touched by
everything and resembles everything' (70). As example, he points to the
scene where Lee Kang-sheng carves a watermelon into a bowling ball and then
bowls with it before smashing it open on the wall. In this case, Joyard
confirms that Tsai is interested in the inner workings of things, not just
characters. He claims that the characters confront their bodies as a
'mystery' and are obsessed with the interior 'of things and beings --
related to a fear of the hollow, a theoretical variation on the theme of
emptiness' (70). In addition, 'the body bears hollowness within it . . . It
fills and empties . . . [and is] subject to diverse fluxes' (71). The
characters' bodies are malleable, passive -- especially that of Lee
Kang-sheng, the protagonist in many of Tsai's films. Joyard asks, 'What can
a body do in Tsai's films? Swallow, ingest food, water and other
substances, receive blows, fall down, then form a circuit like a machine'
(71). The body is 'a place where fiction, fantasies and desire are
deployed'; its interior, 'an unknown space to torture, love or pleasure;
[where] real desires and perhaps feelings are revealed' (71).

Tsai's portrayal of the private and intimate aspects of his characters'
bodies and lives, whether it is bathroom or bedroom behaviour, ties in with
his search for the ordinary real. Hence we see his characters do all that
basic animals do to survive: eat, drink, urinate and defecate, sleep,
masturbate, or make love. They are described as insects possessed with a
'latent animality': 'watching, crawling, eating, quenching thirst and
relieving themselves, pestering each other or providing shelter' (34). Yet,
the ordinary real is not usually revealed through dialogue, not only
because the director feels there is lack of verbal communication between
people, but because he believes that characters often show their true
selves in solitary situations. Thus, he explores their inner lives by
attaching importance to gesture and body language, through *vision* as
opposed to speech which he distrusts (110).

It is clear that Tsai strives to achieve a realist effect. Though his four
features are not exactly traditional-style documentaries, there is
something very documentary-like about them. Rehm attempts to define what
Tsai calls 'the real' by quoting the director: 'People with a certain
style, a glass of water or just water or a door: all these things interest
me in everyday life' (24). His real differs from the documentary effect
currently in vogue -- shaky cam, inconsistent focusing, quivers and jumps,
natural lighting emphasized by over or underexposure, poor sound, etc. . .
.. Rehm regards Tsai's 'real' to be 'spliced to that of the first reels of
the Lumiere brothers, a real of closeness or of surveying' (25). This
approach assumes the primacy of scouting for location, as location is
decisive in determining the mise en scene. The interview with Tsai where he
confirms the importance of the choice of environment or location is thus
aptly entitled, 'Scouting'.

'For me, cinema is something that can show reality', states Tsai (105).
This goes for time and space: 'The important thing is what is happening
*in* that space, *with* those characters, at that specific *moment*' (105).
He wants time in his films to be real time. To capture that real, fleeting
time, he will usually only use one camera, even though this gives a partial
perspective (107). In actuality, what interests him about real time is that
it is uncontrollable (107). Yet, Tsai is the first to admit that there is
some contrivance (he calls it 'abstract') in filmmaking; for example, in
his blocking a street off from people walking by before a shoot in order to
achieve the idea of Taipei as a lonely city (112-113).

When it comes to his modus operandi, there are three or four phases.
Initially, he works almost like an anthropologist or researcher by first
observing the characters. However, the shortcoming of this phase is that he
could never get under their skins as he was 'always restricted to
appearances' (83). Thus his move to the next phase, which 'was really about
showing the collective behaviour patterns of city dwellers' and finding the
right type of people to reflect this collective behaviour (84).
Nevertheless, he still felt something missing at this stage, and so: 'Now I
am starting to observe my actors, who are people I have known well for
quite a time. That way, I can really get under their skin. And in so doing
-- you might call it phase four -- I'm starting to observe myself' (84).

In fact, Tsai explains that his films are a form of self-dialogue and
reflect his own search and frame of mind at a particular time. For example,
the unhappiness he showed in _Rebels_ was how he felt at the time and in
_Vive l'Amour_, he wanted to show his own search for love, one which he
says he still has not found (97). He states that each time he makes a film,
he moves a bit closer to the centre of that private self which he still
hasn't managed to master' (97). Moreover, Tsai admits that he cares little
for the narrative pleasures and patience of the audience (98).

Finally, the writers of this book are reluctant to concede that emptiness
is what defines the mood of these films. Joyard claims that it is
hollowness rather than emptiness, and seems determined to connect the dots,
no matter how far apart they may be in Tsai's universe of scattered
illusions and allusions. He writes: 'All it takes is a little belief, and
to notice that Tsai's work is hardly limited to the enclosed, autistic
passions that some have claimed to admire' (75). Joyard then goes on to
detail the 'connectionless system' in the filmmaker's work, but fills it
with authorial intention:

'Tsai has been working on this since the beginning, with the desire to
harmonize in accordance with his musical inspiration and his art of
refrains, repetition and loops. His problem is not only to fix time and
space, to work out the details of each shot . . . [but] to include each
shot in a broader movement' (75).

Joyard considers the body of work (leading up to _The Hole_) as a whole:
'[His films] each contain a number of blocks which are not self-sufficient
(the shots) for which the links are the most important' (75). Indeed,
Riviere also notes the repetition that crops up in Tsai's films but the
director elucidates that the repetition of water, doors, stairs, meal
scenes, or bathrooms occur because, each time, he finds something
interesting and different in them, as they involve not only material
circumstances but also behaviour that he wants to display (108).

The writers seem to focus on an analysis of _The Hole_, seeing it as the
one Tsai film that can sum up his overall poetics. According to Joyard, all
Tsai's favourite themes are combined here (76), whereas Rehm regards the
musical in the film as something which serves to activate the hole, 'to
disassemble the film's established partitions' (39). In failing to classify
whether _The Hole_ is science-fiction, a musical drama, a documentary on
urban mentalities, etc. etc., Rehm concludes that the response lies not in
the whole, but in the disruption of these different levels, precisely in
the *hole* (40). In that sense, I can conclude that Tsai's work inevitably
transgresses the classification of genres, perhaps even trampling on them
underfoot in his headlong search for realism -- to capture the corporeality
of being in the present, within the moment and the space.

This book does refer to other films and literary and film theories but only
as an attempt to articulate and locate Tsai Ming-liang's cinematic vision
among that of other filmmakers. For example, the poetic discussion of the
body, corporeality, and of space, I felt could have been even more
theoretical but I'm not sure how relevant it would then be to Tsai's
aesthetic vision. Overall, the most interesting contribution of the book
for me is its discussion of the director's ideas about trying to achieve
the effects of the real.

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada


Footnotes

1. Tsai's four features are _Rebels of a Neon God_ (1992), _Vive l'Amour_
(1994), _The River_ (1997), and _The Hole_ (1998). He has also made
telefilms, scenarios, plays and a choreographic adaptation of Brecht's _The
Good Woman of Sezhuan_.

2. Tsai hints in an interview with David Walsh that May is trying to decide
if she wants to ask for love from the lover she has left in the morning.
David Walsh, 'Tsai Ming-liang's _Vive l'Amour_: Taipei's Lonely Souls',
_World Socialist Web Site_, 24 October 1994
<http://www.wsws.org/arts/1994/oct1994/tsai-o94.shtml>.

3. Walsh, 'Tsai Ming-liang's _Vive l'Amour_'.


Copyright © _Film-Philosophy_ 2000

Gaik Cheng Khoo, 'Tsai Ming-liang: Defining What's Real',
_Film-Philosophy_, vol. 4 no. 23, October 2000
<http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy/files/gckhoo.html>.

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