Kino immer anders
No grandiose closing day for this formerly popular cinema in Taipei. Instead a gloomy and wet evening, and a thin audience, gathered for the screening of a martial arts classic, King Hu’s 1966 Dragon Inn. The last 90 minutes, the last few viewers, the last encounters in the dark. Among those taking refuge from the rainstorm, a man hopes for the company of a stranger, whereas some of the actors of Dragon Inn only sit with their nostalgia. Meanwhile, the hobbled ticket woman wanders through the theater, leading us through every inch of the place, looking for the projectionist to give him a steamed bun.
Goodbye, Dragon Inn is the quiet closure of an era, one of those invisible ends that fade into the everyday, the everything and the everywhere. Yet the slow contemplative pace and meticulous frames transcend the common into a mysterious and absorbing elegy. Though it was premiered twenty years ago, this haunting goodbye is nowadays sharper than ever, after the silent agony of cinemas during the pandemic. Luckily enough, the 7th art doesn’t seem to have a closing date in view.
Elsa Dupuis-Bouguer
