All of them could seat hundreds of patrons, maybe a thousand even, and I never once saw them close to filled. Anyone who had a special place for movies, especially if it's gone, will be able to see that theater in the Fu Ho. We only watch a single task being performed in real time during the course of the entire first third of this film, but it not only makes compellingly clear – in a way that no short montage could – how crucial the role of fresh water is to the couple’s existence, but vividly illustrates the hard work and dedication that is required to keep the crops that are their life and livelihood watered.

I thought of my last visits to Seattle's Coliseum, King and United Artists theaters, and how they clung to life in their final days. Tsai clearly had no interest in telling a story per se, but instead focusses on characters and moments that open small windows into lives whose back stories we are then invited to expand upon ourselves.

As in other Tsai movies, the colors are rich, and even the starkest images are carefully composed, allowing the film to convey the full depth of feelings. Using the composer’s most famous opera as its kicking-off point, the film is set primarily in a busy metropolitan bus station and focuses on a woman who is trying to get home but doesn’t quite have enough money for a ticket. 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.

Outside, he meets Miao Tien, who also acted in the film and attended the screening with his grandson. But then it would no longer be Sátántangó, just as doing likewise to Goodbye, Dragon Inn would effectively rob the film of its identity. This gives rise to an amusingly peculiar moment when the tourist, after repeatedly glancing at a middle-aged man a couple of rows down, moves and sits next to him, then turns to curiously scrutinise his face, an oddly rude inspection that the man elects to ignore until the tourist gives up and departs. Given my initial uncertainty, I was surprised how involved I became in it and ultimately how much I gleaned from what is only suggested by what occurs on screen, and was certainly caught out by its poetic evocation of childhood memories, its moments of almost absurdist humour and its touching final moments. The film runs for 82 minutes, yet I have a feeling that if the footage was handed to most editors to assemble without guidance from the director then the length would be shortened by about two-thirds.Some will argue that the same could be said for anything approaching a story, at least in the traditional sense. On a dark, wet night in Taipei City, a cavernous old picture palace is about to close its doors forever. The very definition of a film that will starkly divide opinion, Goodbye, Dragon Inn is likely to prove frustrating and unsatisfying viewing for some, but if you can adjust to its slow pace and fascination with stillness and small moments, then there’s a good chance it will really work for you. When the woman approaches the ticket office, for instance, the angle chosen suggests the ticket seller was not in on the gag and was thus expected not to sell the woman a ticket because she is just short of the required fare, but when seller is encouraged by others to accept this lower payment she agrees, and a reason for declining this offer then has to be quickly manufactured, or at least that’s the way it seems. J. Hoberman of The Village Voice also liked the film: "And because Tsai is the director, Goodbye, Dragon Inn is also a movie of elegant understatement and considerable formal intelligence.