Modern movies are permeated with portrayals of life on the set, but there’s another world of movies that plays a rarely observed role in the art of the cinema: the movie theatre, the public spectacle made out of the circulation of people, money, and popcorn. It’s a spectacle that’s of diminishing centrality to the movie experience, which is why Tsai Ming-liang’s elegiac 2003 film, “Goodbye, Dragon Inn” (which I discuss in this clip), about the closing of a movie theatre, is both prescient and utterly up to date. Other ways of watching movies—on a computer and even on a phone—have come to the fore, and, as a result, new ways of living with movies have emerged. They’re no less valid and no less important (the movie lover’s life is greatly enriched by the video essay and the Twitter discussion), but they’re different, practically and psychologically. The corridors, the projection booth, the box office, and even the bathrooms are, in a strange but ineluctable way, a part of the cinema. So is the screen. I like to sit in or near the front row, because my relationship to movie images isn't solely visual or psychological but also physical. Tsai’s film gets at that feeling better than any other movie I’ve seen.
Movie of the Week: “Goodbye, Dragon Inn”
