What Time is it There?

C+

Directed by Tsai Ming Liang

Tsai Ming Liang is one of Taiwan's major cinematic exports, right along with Edward Yang and Hsou Hisao Hsien. The winner of several major film awards and critically acclaimed accross the globe, Tsai's films deal mostly with alienation and the breakdown of communication within society (or at least I think they do...). His films are also notorious for their languid pacing and sometimes frustrating vagueness, two characteristics that are fully on display in "What time is it there?"

"What time is it there?" opens with the death of the main characters Hsiao Kang's father. Hsiao Kang's mother goes into a rather intense period of mourning while Hsiao Kang copes by trudging through his day to day existence selling watches on the streets of Taipei. While working, he meets Shang-Chyi, a local girl about to leave on vacation to Paris who desperately wants to buy Hsiao Kang's watch since it displays two time zones. Shortly after Shang Chyi's departure, Hsiao Kang, trying to cope with his mother's increasingly eratic behavior, attempts to escape it all by setting every clock in Taipei to Paris time. Meanwhile, in the City of Lights, Shang Chyi is slowly slipping into urban ennui and begins to desperately seek some type of human contact.

Like most of Tsai's films, "What time is it there?" has some brilliant and beautiful moments. The winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin film festival for cinematography, "What time is it there?" is worth watching simply for its beautiful imagery. Tsai also has some worthwhile insight on the value of human contact and on the importance of establishing connections with others, no matter what their relationship may be to us. Loneliness is a fascinating topic in film and Tsai certainly does an admirably job of sketching out a trio of characters who are all dealing with feelings of loneliness and emptiness in their owns ways.

The problem, as is the case with many other of Tsai's films is that the pace of "What time is it there?" more often than not slips from meditative and slow moving to simply mandering and lost. While watching "What time is it there?" I got the same feeling as when I watched Jia Zhangke, namely that I was watching a supreme talent behind the camera who just didn't seem capable of either shouting "Cut!" or working to tighten up his film in the editing room. Many scenes in "What time is it there?" were overlong and, rather than adding to the mood Tsai was obviously attempting to infuse the film with, seriously detracted from it. As stated beforehand, Tsai is a critically acclaimed talent and he certainly has talent to burn when it comes to making movies, but I must say that I unfortunately cannot count myself as one of his admirers.