DAYS

[2.9]

Oh, Tsai Ming-Liang. I only learned after watching this movie that it was inspired (or, less generously, cobbled together) from footage shot by the director as he followed his muse, actor Kang-Sheng Lee, in his quest to ease chronic back pain.  While many films can start off as unknowable projects that morph into something else (INLAND EMPIRE comes straight to mind), the problem with DAYS is that it feels like Tsai has lazily included roughed-out footage and gratuitous scenes to pad his story into a full length feature.  Tsai is known for long takes, and he utilizes them in abundance here.  Evoking the minimalism of Warhol films, like SLEEP (one of the last shots is a lengthy scene of a man sleeping), almost all of the shots are static, many with very little in-frame action. The first shot shows Lee sitting in a chair staring out at a window at rain. Shot length: 8 minutes (I’m just guessing here, as it all blends into a dreamlike meditation). The next shot is Lee soaking in a bath, eyes closed. Shot length: 4 minutes.  This shot is particularly interesting, as Lee’s nipples are front and center of the frame, with his head pushed up against the top edge, cut off. The focus on Lee’s infamous 3rd nipple is particularly odd, but amusing, and this won’t be the last time we see it.

Next, we cut to a shot of a man preparing food, but the camera is placed under a table, behind two old-fashioned cooking vessels, giant clay pots lit with fire underneath. We see the legs and arms of the man preparing food, and sometimes his shoulders as he bends down, but that’s it.  The next shot is the same man in a sparse bathroom, washing vegetables and fish (also several minutes). Then we finally get a wide shot of the whole living room, and our protagonist. It’s a decrepit apartment space, and one wonders if the man is squatting there (which would explain why he is cooking without electricity in the living room, but he had running water in the bathroom so… maybe not?).  This three-shot sequence of the man methodically preparing food can’t help but feel like an obvious homage to JEANNE DEILMAN, but lacking in the theoretical contexts and payoff that the tedious repetitions of the Belgian film provide. Yet, this food preparation is still one of the more fascinating scenes of DAYS, mostly because the method of cooking seems so unique to foreign eyes.  

Next, we see Lee getting acupuncture, but with the addition of hot coals attached to wires, clipped to the needles, providing scorching heat for the treatment.  Again, the foreignness of this procedure is what compels us to watch, to study the frame. Lee keeps his eyes closed, barely reacting.  Only when the coals begin dying out, with the ash falling over Lee’s neck and back, do we hear some off-camera Mandarin being exchanged (according to the preface of the film, the film is intentionally un-subtitled). Some men ask if it’s hurting, and then a hand reaches in and begins carefully brushing the ash off Lee, who for brief moments appears to be getting agitated. The coals and needles are finally removed and hands reach back into frame with a hard scraping tool, and furiously and deeply rubs it up and down the same part of Lee’s back as the needle’s were. And right before our eyes, his skin begins turning purple and inflamed. Again, it is the unbroken “realness” of it that is fascinating.  This is followed by jarring handheld sequence (the only one in a film devoted to long static shots), where we follow Lee, in a neckbrace, as he walks through a crowd. This is the moment when I began turning on the movie, a feeling only amplified after finishing the film. Why was this scene included? Tsai shoots it with a shallow-focused wide angle, so that we are fixed on Lee’s face, but there are plenty of moments where passerbys look directly into the lens, and the magic is gone. We know that Tsai likely filmed this covertly, just following his actor onto the busy streets, but we don’t want to be confronted by this truth while trying to get lost in Tsai’s meditative world.  What’s more, there doesn’t seem to be any ‘purpose’ to this scene (which, honestly, I could say for many other scenes as well), which makes its inclusion in the final cut even more confounding. Was Lee so strapped for footage to reach feature-length that he included pretty much everything he shot? Other than logistics, there is no formal reason why this scene should be so radically different than the rest. It’s unique handheld-ness makes it seem as if it should have some special significance, but what could that possibly be?

We see Lee slumped in a hotel chair, Hong Kong in the window behind him. Then a shot of a street market, with Thai signs everywhere, and the man from the cooking-scene now standing hesitatingly by himself, looking around. For what? Something hints that he is a hustler, or maybe I’m projecting. Then we see Lee in a hotel room, on his phone. He removes the sheets of his bed, puts down a towel, and then we cut to our Thai man in the room, preparing an oil massage for Lee.  In his underwear, the Thai man climbs on top of Lee and begins massaging his back. Lee’s ass is just barely out of frame, as our focus is drawn to the Thai man’s hands (whose face is also cut off by the framing) as they rub up and down the skin.  Then we cut in slightly closer as Lee turns, face-up, and the Thai man begins jerking him off (which we hear) as he plays with Lee’s nipples.  Lee’s third nipple again makes a star-turn right in the center of the frame, so it’s particularly odd that the Thai man barely pays it any attention.  It’s the STAR!!!  Anyway, this is a scene that should not feel erotic. The long static shots, conservative nudity (as in, just Lee’s chest), and minimal moaning. And yet, there is something hypnotically seductive about the massage. Tsai’s framing focuses on the act, on the hands caressing Lee’s body, and Lee’s slowly building, almost held-back reaction, are somehow charged with a strange sexual energy.  Finally Lee climaxes and we cut to a scene in the shower of them cleaning up. Then back in the bedroom, Lee motions for the Thai man to sit on the bed, while Lee produces a small music box to him as a gift. The man plays the song, listens to it, and smiles. Then he leaves, but Lee chases after him. We see them, from a distance, eating at a small Chinese restaurant.  

Then, Lee is at his home (presumably?) taking a picture of a fish with his phone. Next, we see the Thai man back in his living room, cooking again. I was expecting him to receive the photo of the fish on his phone, and we would see the beginning of a texting relationship, but this doesn’t happen. Instead, we cut to Lee in his bed sleeping. Then a close up of Lee in bed, eyes open, staring blankly, if a bit melancholically, into space.  And finally, the last shot: the Thai man sits on a bus stop bench, looking around (I guess for a client?), until he finally pulls out the music box, listens to it’s tune, and then gets up and walks off.  It would be a frustrating non-ending, if not for the fact that the whole film has been set up by Tsai as a meandering journey without stakes. There’s certainly a novelty to having an entire narrative take place with almost no dialogue, but I would hesitate to describe DAYS as having a fully realized narrative. If we are to talk about story, it’s basically: two lonely met meet up in Thailand, feel a connection to each other during a brief sexual encounter, and then never meet up again. Unlike DIELMAN, the long shots don’t pay off. Unlike the BEFORE SUNSET trilogy, the unrequited love of two people from different countries that have to leave each other ends up having no emotional (or even philosophical) impact. There are no hidden layers. It’s a simple film about enduring pain, and the brief moments that ease that pain. Tsai can do better.