VERDICT: Tsai Ming-liang is a master of the meditative short and he’s on exemplary form again with this nocturnal moment of rest in a restless Hong Kong.
In 2019, revered Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang was invited to Hong Kong to perform some old songs. This was at the height of the protests that consumed the city after the introduction of a controversial amendment to extradition law and the streets bubbled with the frenetic energy of civil unrest. At night, the atmosphere would calm, and in these moments, Tsai would capture the lazy heartbeat of a resting Hong Kong via its quiet, nocturnal toings and froings. The result is The Night, another sedate and meditative short in the same vein as his Walker series.
The film opens on a close-up of a wall adorned with the torn remnants of posters. Where Yan Wai Yin’s Tugging Diary, which screened at Rotterdam, explored the nature of protest graffiti, here this brief glimpse serves as a reminder of what has been happening on the city street during the day. The film, rather, turns its attention from such things and patiently observes bus shelters, shopfronts, road crossings, and an underpass. These aren’t typically deserted spaces, people wander across screens and cars sidle past, but the pace of life has slowed. Gone is the charged atmosphere of the light, making way for something more, if not somnambulant, then drowsy. Where Tsai’s Walker films create an inherent visual focal point – Lee Kang-sheng’s walker – The Night offers no single draw for our attention, instead allowing us to just drift.
The literal translation of the film’s original title is ‘The Beautiful Night is Slipping Away,’ which offers a far more poetic and melancholic indication of tone. That title is taken from an old Chinese song which came to Tsai’s mind when he visited Hong Kong and inspired the making of the film. The song plays over the final few minutes of footage: ‘What a tender night it was, our hearts became one…but the moment is over too soon.’ It reminds us, after nearly twenty minutes of relaxed observation, that as well as inducing a dreamy reverie, The Night is a highly personal response to political turmoil – a nocturnal moment of calm after the storm, or indeed, right in its midst.
Director, cinematography: Tsai Ming-liang
Producer: Claude Wang
Editor: Chang Jhong-Yuan
Producer: Claude Wang
Production company: Homegreen Films (Taiwan)
Venue: Karlovy Vary (Imagina)
In Mandarin
19 minutes
