Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Goodbye, Dragon Inn is a 2003 Taiwanese comedy-drama film written and directed by Tsai Ming-liang about a movie theater about to close down and its final screening of the 1967 wuxia film "Dragon Inn". Plot. During the last 90 minutes of a screening of "Dragon Inn" at an old Taipei cinema about to close down, the hobbled ticket woman tries to find the projectionist to give him a steamed bun. A Japanese tourist seeks a homosexual encounter; Chen Chao-jung brushes off his advance and tells him the place is haunted. , an actor in "Dragon  Inn", watches the film with tears in his eyes. Outside, he meets Miao Tien, who also acted in the film and attended the screening with his grandson. Production. In his prior film, "What Time is it There?", Tsai set a scene in the old Fu-Ho theater at the edge of Taipei. 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. After the premiere, Tsai approached the owner to shoot an entire film there, fearing the soon-to-close theater would be lost  forever. What was envisioned as a long short soon turned into a feature due to the long takes. Release. A 4K restoration was released on DVD and Blu-ray by Second Run on November 23, 2020, and digitally by Metrograph on December 18, 2020. Reception. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" has an approval rating of 80% based on 44 reviews, with an average rating of 7.30/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Deliberately paced yet absorbing, "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" offers an affectionate—and refreshingly unique—look at a fading theater that should strike a chord  with cineastes." A. O. Scott of "The New York Times" praised the film, writing, ""Goodbye, Dragon Inn" has a quiet, cumulative magic, whose source is hard to identify. Its simple, meticulously composed frames are full of mystery and feeling; it's an action movie that stands perfectly still." J. Hoberman of "The Village Voice" also liked the film: "And because Tsai is the director, "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" is also a movie of elegant understatement and considerable formal intelligence." Tsai considers it one of his best films and chose it as one of his entries of the 10 greatest films of  all time in the 2012 Sight & Sound Directors' Poll. Directors Monte Hellman and Apichatpong Weerasethakul also voted for it in that poll. On November 6, 2020, Weerasethakul tweeted, "THE best film of the last 125 years: Goodbye, Dragon Inn." The film won several awards, including the FIPRESCI Prize at the 60th Venice International Film Festival and the Best Feature Gold Plaque at the Chicago International Film Festival.