Days

DAYS   **1/2

Tsai Ming-liang

2020

 

IDEA:  Two men wander in their own individual malaises before joining for a brief, sensual reprieve.

BLURB:  In his apparent attempt to pare down his signature themes of urban alienation and erotic longing to their barest expression, Tsai has produced something that is often more vacant than entrancing. Never before have his protracted takes felt less purposeful or inspired: whether it’s a character washing vegetables for minutes on end in a series of blandly composed vignettes, or even a rare handheld follow-shot on the street, so much of Days feels random and aloof, dependent more on the inevitably soporific effect of durational minimalism itself than on anything specific going on inside (or outside) the frame. That being said, it’s still a Tsai film, so there are pleasures to be found. One is in his decision to completely abolish dialogue. With only two characters and a handful of interchangeable locations, and all of its (non)action delegated to nonverbal, largely motionless bodies, Days provides a refreshing respite of quietude. Its pointedly intergenerational lovers, who meet for perhaps the only genuine moment of sustained, restorative intimacy in all of Tsai’s cinema, evoke a silent movie pair à la Murnau or Chaplin (the British icon is even musically quoted). And then there’s the sight of Lee Kang-sheng receiving a 20-minute massage in real-time in what reads as a lovely, extra-textual gift of gratitude from Tsai to his devoted muse. These things are nice, but they don’t quite justify Days’ indulgent two hour-plus runtime, and they don’t hide the fact that Tsai has made much deeper, richer, and more interesting films, where loneliness and yearning were charged with more than just a sense of stolid glumness.