Goodbye, Dragon Inn

Is cinema really dying? As movie houses close and corporations dominate, the art form is at risk of changing beyond recognition. In this wide-ranging and elegiac essay, Nick Pinkerton reflects upon Tsai Ming-liang’s 2003 film Goodbye, Dragon Inn, a modern classic haunted by the ghosts and portents of a culture in flux.
In an old Taipei movie theatre, on the eve of a ‘temporary closing’, King Hu’s 1967 wuxia classic Dragon Inn plays to a dwindling audience. Lonely souls cruise the aisles for companionship while two actors from Hu’s film watch themselves writ large, perhaps for the last time.