|
|
|
Days/Afternoon: Two Films by Tsai Ming-Liang
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - United Kingdom - Second Run Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (9th December 2024). |
|
The Film
 Golden Berlin Bear (Best Film): Tsai Ming-liang (nominee), Teddy (Best Feature Film): Tsai Ming-liang (nominee) and Teddy – Special Mention: Tsai Ming-liang (winner) - Berlin International Film Festival, 2020 Golden Q-Hugo: Tsai Ming-liang (nominee) and Silver Q-Hugo: Tsai Ming-liang (winner) - Chicago International Film Festival Golden Horse Award (Best Narrative Feature): Days (nominee), Best Director: : Tsai Ming-liang (nominee), and Best Sound Effects: Dennis Tsao, Hsiang-Ling Ho, Terry Lin, Yu-Chih Lee, and Min-Hsu Wang (nominee) - Golden Horse Film Festival, 2020 Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Prize: Tsai Ming-liang (nominee) and Sebastiane Award (Best Film): Tsai Ming-liang (nominee) - San Sebastián International Film Festival, 2020 Festival Prize (Best Actor): Lee Khang-sheng (nominee), Best Narrative Feature: Days (nominee), and Best Director: Tsai Ming-liang (nominee) - Taipei Film Festival, 2020 Following a stroke, Kang (Rebels of the Neon God's Lee Khang-sheng) lives his life in perpetual pain, sitting without moving at home, and drawing attention going back and forth between physical therapy appointments, conventional and less so, wearing a neck brace with his left hand raised to keep his neck straight. Laotian immigrant Non (Anong Houngheuangsy) works in a factory by day and as a masseuse and sex worker by night. During Kang's trip to Bangkok, the two meet up in a hotel room for a massage and briefly achieve an intimacy that may offer either a brief respite in their loneliness or touch them forever. Days from director Tsai Ming-liang (Goodbye, Dragon Inn) runs just over two hours but very little happens on the surface. Composed of locked-down camera long takes, the film attempts to immerse the viewer in the inner worlds of the two characters, be it the contemplative stillness of Kang watching the rain and listening to the sounds of the city or Non's constant movement cooking in his flat surrounded by posters, blankets, and junked industry advertisements suggesting aspirations towards world travel. Rather than the duration engendering a feeling in the viewer of "something please happen," the length at which the camera dwells on Kang's treatment may make the viewer ponder what kind of pain he is in to undergo that type of electroacupuncture therapy while Non cooking over burning coals which also heats his flat seems productive but also possesses a sense of loneliness rather than solitude. Although shot during COVID and certainly suited to viewing in aimless times, the film does not really suggest that their connections to other has been devastated by quarantine but of the necessity of lonely and solitary people to continue moving about in the outer world while locked in to their own minds by pain or imagining being anywhere else. Some of director Tsai Ming-liang are short on dialogue, or at least dialogue as conveying plot, but Days almost entirely dispenses with it giving a sense that nothing meaningful is conveyed be it between Kang and his therapists or even in the financial exchange between Kang and Non. Beyond the actual physical intimacy, the most meaningful exchange appears to be Kang gifting Non with a music box that plays a melody from Charlie Chaplin's Limelight which Non listens to in his one scene of absolute stillness at the close that recalls Kang's introductory scene. For most viewers, even art house aficionados who worship Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels, Days may be something just "to get through," but it may resonate more than comfortable whether viewers sit in contemplative silence or fill their solitary hours with movement and noise. 
Video
Digitally shot and finished, Days actually had some American theatrical play from arthouse label Grasshopper Films – founded by one of the former partners of Cinema Guild – before its Blu-ray release. Presumably the film had some festival play in the U.K. before Second Runs' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray. Consisting primarily of locked-down long takes and a few on-the-fly walking sequences, eye strain may be more of an issue than any kind of artefacting (so much so that the slightest movement of Kang's facial features or shadows cast on background walls might be mistaken for an encoding issue). Shot in mostly natural light, video noise creeps into a couple sequences including Non's cooking scenes. 
Audio
Audio mixes include DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 stereo. The film is intentionally unsubtitled and dialogue is not emphasized in the mix, often recessed in keeping with the position of the actors offscreen or even in the frame – an exchange between Kang and Non happens while the two are standing in the background of a wide-angle set-up – and as one listens to the environmental sounds, it is surprising just how a film plays without dialogue as a consistent anchoring presence up front and center. As mentioned, there are no subtitles for the dialogue while the opening and closing credits are bilingual. 
Extras
Extras are spread over two discs starting with an interview with director Tsai Ming-Liang (26:56) who reveals that he and Kang were supposed to work on a play in Europe when Kang had a mini-stroke. During his recovery, the director filmed some of his therapy sessions and doctor's appointments camerman Jhong Yuan Chang who had shot the making-of for his film Stray Dogs. He had also made the acquaintance of Laotian actor Houngheuangsy and became interested in his dorm life as they chatted over a video app. Both of these things along with an art installation the director was working on inspired the film, which he initially assembled from those recordings, although everything in the film was actually shot for it. "Wandering" (34:25) is a 2021 short film by Tsai Ming-Liang that is essentially a walk through his "Walker" art installation. "Days Passed: Lee Kang-Sheng Through the Eyes of Tsai Ming-Liang" (3:17) is a video essay by film historian Michelle Cho that has no narration and only a quote from the director, focusing instead on the actor's changing looks throughout the director's filmography. The disc also includes teasers and trailers for the feature.  Disc two opens with Afternoon (137:02) which Tsai Ming-Liang described in the above interview as originating in a book to be prepared in conjunction with the release of the film but he instead decided to conduct it as a video conversation with Lee Kang-Sheng in a picturesque ruin near his home. Rather than anecdotes about specific films, we instead are presented with two men who are supposed to have a conversation when they have lived together for twenty years and must have said everything that can be said. The director is gay and the actor is straight, but there is a sense of longing which Ming expresses as anxious concern and protectiveness rather than possession, even revealing that he both would not want to work with anyone else but also wished that Kang worked with more directors as if he were limiting his muse's expression. Kang's response seems at first to confirm that but then it seems like a kind of gentle mocking of those anxieties. What Ming does most clearly express is that he feels that Kang has been a constant source of silent comfort in his life that he has not been able to express how grateful he is to have him in his life as more than just an artistic collaborator. There is no offscreen prompting so the conversation does drift, stall, and resume with much smoking and the viewer's eye being drawn to the jungle canopy visible outside the windows of the ruin. The conversation trails off but they both express their contentment to spend their remaining years with things as they are. Although much talkier, Afternoon like Days does leave a lot to the viewer to intuit about the lives of these two together and apart. Disc two also includes "Tsai Ming-Liang in Conversation with Tony Rayns" (78:27) shot in 2019 at an East Asian film festival in Ireland. Although Tsai Ming-Liang appears to understand English when it comes to Rayns questions, he answers in Mandarin and is translated by an interpreter. They most humorously discuss his collaboration with Lee Kang-Sheng (who is present in the audience) who plays different characters in his films but demonstrates an evolution of character across them with Ming revealing that he incorporates elements of the actor's real life into the characters on the surface and elements of himself on the inside of the character. He also discusses the dilemma of wanting the actor to "pretty up" for his films for the appeal of the audience (and himself as a gay man) with his own fascination with the actor's changing face and body over the years throughout his filmography. He and Rayns also discuss the reception of his films in Taiwan versus abroad where they sell better, as well as a Taiwanese disdain for art films even though he admits to having never had to seek out funding. The audio recording is straight from the camera so you might need to fool with some of your television or sound system audio modes or volume leveling functions to get the clearest sound compared to the mixed audio of the feature or even the more focused recording of Afternoon. The disc also includes a theatrical trailer (1:09) for the film. 
Packaging
Packaged with the disc is a twenty-page booklet by So Mayer which includes the director's statement about his change from developing scripts to films based around Lee Kang-Sheng's "slow walking." Mayer discusses the shift in Tsai Ming-Liang's filmmaking after Stray Dogs, contrasting the two characters and their activities while also pointing out visuals within them that allude to one another as well as the significance of the tune from "Limelight" and the Chaplin film in the context of the Tsai Ming-Liang's filmography.
Overall
For most viewers, even art house aficionados who worship Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels, Days may be something just "to get through," but it may resonate more than comfortable whether viewers sit in contemplative silence or fill their solitary hours with movement and noise.
|
|||||
|