The River

Although the first thing that strikes you about 'The River' is its measured pace and relaxed narrative style, you will soon feel yourself giving up the rein to this film that demands respect.

It is a film that documents social decline in the modern world, a kind of alienation and dysfunction that has become a staple of arthouse cinema, and yet treats it with such originality and audacity that it seems brand new all over again. It is the kind of film I like: the kind of film that uses 'dead time', the type pioneered by Antonioni, that establishes the film within a natural context and long takes that never disrupt the time-truth of the images, resulting in film that hardly ever manipulates or patronizes the audience. It relies instead on the understanding that the audience will accept (or possibly relish in) the films distinctly alternative themes and form. Indeed, the film has its flaws, as all films must, but I feel that it is the measured pace that will test most- don't let it! After-all, it is only 114 minutes long.

A film laced with a quite understatement that explodes towards the end in a finale that is, in my viewing experience, un-equaled in its shocking power. Recommended.

This is the Tsai film that has gone the longest between my first and second viewings. I've lost my old review, but I think it was sometime in 2003. Although several key scenes have lingered in my memory, for some reason over the years I've downgraded it to "2nd tier Tsai". I think that's a good place for it, bearing in mind that 2nd tier Tsai is still really, really good. It builds on VIVE L'AMOUR and sets up more of his signature elements -- water, illness, isolation, urban decay. The only real problem with it is that there a few scenes that don't add anything. They're variations on ideas that have already been sufficiently expressed. However, the bulk of the film is compelling despite the typical snail's pace. Kang-sheng Lee's chronic sore neck (which I'm sure we're meant to infer is caused by submerging himself in the polluted river) is subtly horrifying, one of the most haunting images of pain I've seen. Although I think Tsai did better at expressing communication breakdown in other films, the theme is put across strongly, culminating in that deeply disturbing climax. If it doesn't all quite come together perfectly, it's nonetheless a film that resonates with me.

Every second of this film is calculated. Whether it is a shadow crossing a bed or the obstructed view out a doorway. It is an excellent story about taboo and how defilement can exist in many ways. The audience watches as a white-clad, pristine, Taiwanese youth is marred by his immediate environment, a close friend, and then his own family. The director illustrates Tai Pei as a filthy industrial cesspool by concentrating the film's landscape in the inner city.

Besides the subject matter, the director uses agonizing long shots to make the audience uncomfortable. There is no soothing music, only the roar of cars and other urban noise. It left me breathless. The best film I have seen to date.

Tsai Ming-Liang offers viewers in "The River" an honest chance to take it or leave it right from the first sequence. If you make it through and enjoy (or rather, are puzzled by) this first sequence - a film shooting in a river, depicted in a long, almost real-time pace - you will for sure be caught in his stream, because what follows is simply great, original, surprising, offbeat, funny, alarming and often mind-boggling.

Tsai is a Taiwan filmmaker whose cinematic grammar apparently owes a lot to Westerners - especially to Europeans. You can spot Truffaut in his love for his characters, in the way he always casts his favorite actor Lee kang-Sheng much in the way Truffaut did with Jean-Pierre Léaud, and in the mysterious and surprising ways love expresses itself in his films.

You can feel the influence of Antonioni in the long sequences without dialogue or music, in the urban chaos leading to lack of communication between the characters, in the forces of nature (the heavy constant rain, the omnipresence of water in this case) responding to "civilization's" abuse - the echologic chaos.

You can feel a touch of the Godard of "Le Mépris" in the total lack of communication between very close people (the couple in Godard, the family here) and the kind of non-conform sexuality of the Pasolini of "Teorema" (sexual repression and catharsis among the family members, in both cases).

But Tsai has got something all his own. I've seen now all his feature films and it's very impressive to see how he has developed a language of his own, through his imagery, his pace, his actors' performances, his conflicts, his endings. He is sure to always include unforgettable sequences (here, for sure, the sequence in the sauna between father and son) that will haunt you, delight you, disgust you, move you and stay with you long after you've left the theatre. That's a rare accomplishment in any visual arts these days.

For me, "The River" is surely Tsai's masterpiece to date, a film that flows slowly, harmoniously, hauntingly, effortlessly to its destination, catches you in its stream, and leads you to a free-meaning ending - which, in this case, is something warmly welcome.

After the film, my immediate reaction was it felt like the other extreme of "American Beauty," call it "Taipei Beauty". It's about a dysfunctional family, but in a much quieter, subdued way. It's dark, rather Kafka-est, and at times reminds me of Jim Jarmusch's black and white films. This film is in color, yet the mood and tone somehow felt sparing and heartlessly detached. There's not a whole lot of dialog. Very often we have long shots/scenes - and I mean both in the sense of camera held duration and reach of distance. Director Tsai Ming-liang definitely is not shy at giving us the real-time experience: the stillness of waiting, the (long) pause of a character just standing there, sitting there motionless, alone in the dark in dim lighting, or just going through the routine of munching food. Mind you, it may seem like nothing's going on, but the underlying emotion or turmoil within the character is silently felt. He even repeats (similar) scenes - it has a French film flavor: the actions/motions the characters go through seem to come so naturally, like ordinary daily life routines.

Ambient sound effects play an effective role in "The River," and they're constantly there, aptly applied complementing the scenes instead of musical tracks. Besides the two critical boldly captured intimate scenes of the son, the other intimate scene of the father, another of the mother, are all presented in a transitional flow, unobtrusively natural way. Sensitive portrayals all round - the demonstration of utter unawareness of each other, as a family unit or floating bodies in the circle they're in, is complete. Lee Kang-sheng (apparently a regular in director Tsai's films), playing Xiao-kang the son with the murderous neck pain, was so unbelievably real - so comfortably natural in every scene and situation.

I thought of Jacques Rivette's 1990 "La Belle Noiseuse" which I recently viewed, where Emmanuelle Béart told Michel Piccoli a riddle: "What is something that travels on a hollow track, never sleeps, never goes back?" "It's a river, a stream." It squarely describes this Taipei family of three: the father, the mother, and the son, each are quite lonely by him/herself, leading a hollow existence. You might say 'fate' has a hand in the flow of events: if the son did not casually happen to meet his old girlfriend at the escalators of the mall, leading to his 'extra' actor role of a floating corpse in a movie shoot, when his body being soaked in the river wetness, followed by his riding the scooter with his neck exposed to the breezy wind, hence the chill giving rise to the agonizing neck pain unable to get rid of… As a river has converging tributaries joining its course, we see the father's simultaneous harassing frustration with the non-stop ceiling water leaks in his bedroom - quite a pouring river whenever it rains, plus his unspoken secret; we also get to see the mother's lonely occupation and preoccupation. Like any river, there are unexpected rapids, and the family of three copes. Yes, in Tsai Ming-liang's "The River," the events just happen, and there is no going back - life goes on a-flowing.

There are two other films titled "The River." Jean Renoir's 1951 "The River," a beautiful sensitive film shot in Indian, about three teenage girls growing up in Bengal; Mark Rydell's 1984 "The River" with Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek in a Hollywood 'disaster' save-the-family-farm movie. Tsai's 1997 "The River" may be hard medicine, yet beyond the bitterness, a flavorful taste shall emerge. It's more than thought provoking. To some, I agree, this tastes like a masterpiece.