Days

A text that, like Days, will be full of pauses and silence.
(silence is so melancholic, when it is full of noise)

Through the window, the man watches the rain, the wind, and its effect on the trees. Next to him, on a table, a glass of water.

The water out in the street is violent. The water in the house is contained, kept organised by the shape of the glass.

Is the man looking out of the window or inside himself?

A text that opens gaps, spaces in which.
An imperfect text, full of dropped stitches.

Literature has led us to expect continuous lines, narratives. Cinema, too. Days is told through routines, loose moments drawn out, which might perhaps be days.

Contemplating, not because the image is perfect.

Perfect images don’t require this much time, our brains grasp them in an instant.

Do we call them perfect because they are easier to see? Is the same true for everything else?

The last time I spent so long looking at a face, I must have been sketching. A contemplative gaze, but still a practical one, necessary. The gaze as a tool.

Tsai Ming-Liang decides how long we must watch a man walking down a street. I notice that I watch the man and the street only intermittently. Our brains fill in the gaps with memories and meanings. I think a lot as I watch. Would another person, with other memories, see a different image in that image?

We are all sketching.

Tsai Ming-Liang, with long, bleak shots, has us sketch the day-to-day lives of two men and their vulnerabilities.

A body suffering the pains of old age goes to the city in search of relief.

Another body, immigrant, far from home, prepares meals in an unpleasant environment and tries to recreate the tastes of his village. He sells his body and tries to recreate a kind of love.

In a bathroom, he washes vegetables. In another bathroom, he washes the naked body of another man.

To comfort another body, one must have a body.

Two lonelinesses come together in a hotel bedroom.

A massage, an intimate moment that goes wrong, hesitates and begins again.

This is what our first real-life sexual encounters are like, imperfect.

But these early attempts at getting it right are hardly ever depicted in cinema.

The loneliness and pain carried by each of them has long been sketched out for us. Previous shots and images gave us the information we needed to read these moments of desire and pleasure. Given enough time, observation and openness, we developed compassion for these bodies.

A man slowly turns the handle of a music box. The music emerges almost in drips, from one note to the next. My brain tries to recreate the melody at its original tempo, to fill in the gaps. Our brains are constantly searching for continuity.

Literature has accustomed us to continuous lines.

Cinema, too.

In an interview, the director talks about his muse, Lee Kang-Sheng. He says he came across him in the street, that he has never studied acting. He simply acts. My sense is that, more than an actor, he is an artist’s model. A body available to be looked at, slowly. A generous kind of availability; moving, even.

In front of the camera, Lee Kang-Sheng relaxes and acts without haste. Tsai Ming-Liang calls this a precious ability, because not-acting is a difficult thing. People find it strange; they have pre-existing assumptions about how one should act in front of a camera. When our photograph is taken, we should smile. If we don’t, something is wrong.

Lee doesn’t smile. The illness that was captured in these images is genuine.

Two men eat together, slowly, indifferent to the pace of life and the din of passing cars. They are saying goodbye. The pace, the din, are colossal mountains that alienate their silent, reticent figures. Men whose bodies are full of rain.