I spent several years of my life working as a projectionist at a movie theater; it was a wonderful job, but what I discovered in that dark booth was that the magic of the cinema was not often a two way street; the beam of light that carried the film to the audience did not bounce back through that sheet of glass that separated me (and the film itself in its physical form, untransformed by light) from the experience the audience was sharing. Instead, I was left with the precise sounds of a well oiled machine, the soft whir of the shutter, the hum of the fan that kept the bulb cool; the movie would play, and I'd have two hours or so in which to find an experience of my own before the film would start again.

Those two hours, so exclusive in their nature, are what Tsai Ming Liang's brilliant film Goodbye, Dragon Inn is about. It is, more or less, a real time film, taking place during the last show at a movie theater, on the last night before it closes. It is a film of prolonged sadness - prolonged in the way you hold onto something that is coming to an end - and of inevitable closure. It is about the magic of the cinema; if Cinema Paradiso is about the birth and endurance of that magic, this film suggests its passing.

So. The film (Goodbye, Dragon Inn) begins with the movie (an actual samurai film, also called Goodbye Dragon Inn) beginning. The girl who sells the tickets and the popcorn, her leg in a brace, peeks out from behind a curtain to watch the opening scene, and then retires to a room behind the screen to eat a sweetroll.

In the booth, the projectionist smoke cigarettes, and tends to the leaks in the ceiling.

In the expansive auditorium, a young man looks discreetly for potential hook-ups amongst the scattered audience. Later, he continues his search in the restroom and the dark corridor leading to and from it.

Near the front row, an older gentleman sheds a tear; attentive audiences will realize just what it is that moves him so (and fans of Liang may be reminded of the appearance of Jean Paul Leaud in his last film, What Time Is It There?).

A few rows back, an even older man sits with his grandson. He notices the gentleman who is weeping, but the little boy is caught up in the adventure on the screen.

Each of these characters experience something completely different while the movie is playing, but those experiences are bound by the common factor of the movie itself, and the confines of its running time. When it ends, they all go their separate ways, with completely different memories of exactly the same thing. The lights flicker off in the auditorium. The theater closes its doors, presumably forever, and the man who wept runs into the grandfather and the little boy; they know each other from a long time ago. "No one goes to the movies anymore," they lament.

They hesitate there, outside the theater, almost unwilling to leave. That same hesitation presides over the entire film, which Liang films in what could be considered excruciatingly long and slow scenes, very few of which are comprised of more than one unbroken shot; one can imagine Liang on the set, not calling cut until the last foot of film in the magazine has rolled through the camera. This pace turns the simplest nuance into an important development; it is a beautiful thing to have the chance to slow down and watch these nuances, and the scenes themselves, build towards sublime moments of sadness - and also of surprise, mystery and comedy.

In fact, Liang is known as a somewhat comic filmmaker. His humor may develop at a slow, slow burn, but it is certainly a very large part of his filmmaking style. There are two scenes in particular that are comic masterpieces in and of themselves; one takes place in a restroom and the other has to do with the invasion of personal space in a nearly empty movie theater, and that's all you need to know about either of them.

But in spite of these moments of humor, there's also the overriding fact that the movie, and the cinema itself, is coming to an end. A closing sign hanging outside the theater, seen in an early shot, signifies this fact from the outset. As the minutes tick by, a quiet sense of desperation and longing begins to grow. The finality becomes more clear, more tragic, until in the last scene, as the girl cleans the auditorium for the last time, neither she, nor us, nor Liang wants to leave the theater; so the shot endures, past the point where one would have expected it to be cut, behind the point of a logical edit point; and when it ends, it is still too soon.

When I was a projectionist, there was always a next show; and when there wasn't, the theater would still be opening again the next morning, and there would always be another opportunity for me to sneak into the back of the auditorium and, for at least a little while, share in the experience with the audience. That there is no chance for this in Liang's film is nearly heartbreaking. And certainly, the end of the film and the closing of the cinema could be meant to represent death, or at the very least the passing of an age; the end of any film could be symbolic of as much. There's a reason The Last Picture Show was titled as it was, and why that title means what it does.