What Time is it There?

In a return to the themes so prevalent in his life’s work, Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang once again explores loneliness and alienation in the modern urban environment in his 2002 feature, What Time Is It There?.  The film is the first part of a trilogy, which Tsai later followed with The Skywalk is Gone and The Wayward Cloud.

The film centres around three central characters, each living-out an incredibly lonely existence.  There is Hsiao-kang, a young watch vendor on the streets on Taipei, who, after the passing of his father, encounters Shiang-chyi, a beautiful young woman on her way to Paris.  After she is unsatisfied with Hsiao-kang’s watch selection, she convinces him to sell her the very watch off of his own wrist.  The title of the film refers to Hsiao-kang, who after this random meeting with Shiang-chyi becomes obsessed with changing every clock he sees to Paris time and repeatedly watching French Filmaker Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows in an attempt to reconnect with her while she is away in Paris.  From this point in the film, What Time Is It There? adopts a duel storyline structure, focusing on Hsiao-kang’s newfound obsession with time and Shiang-chyi’s rather lonesome vacation; As she, unable to speak both the French and English language, wonders through the streets of Paris almost completely alone.  Further dwelling on the theme of loneliness and alienation, is the character of Hsiao-kang’s mother, who is left devastated after the sudden death of her husband.  She then becomes obsessed with the idea that he may be attempting to connect with her spiritually to the point where she is convinced he has been reincarnated as a cockroach spotted crawling along the kitchen floor.

As he did with Rebels of the Neon God and The River, Tsai once again presents an urban landscape suffocated by isolation and loneliness, and the nuclear family fractured beyond repair.  Also characteristic of his previous work, Tsai continues to refute the idea of sex as an act of communication or fulfillment, as after their own unsatisfying sexual experiences, all three main characters are left even more alone and even more miserable than before.

Typical of Tsai’s minimalist style, What Time Is it There? contains very little dialogue and no music.  Instead, it is Tsai’s constant brilliance with blending colours in his lighting techniques that gives the film its unique visual texture that both enhances and contrasts the emotions exhibited on screen.  The film is mostly composed of static medium/long shots all held for extremely long durations, giving the viewer time to contemplate the images framed before them.

Tsai’s continued references to Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and French New Wave Cinema in general throughout the feature, including a brief cameo appearance by Lean Pierre Leaud (which is sure to bring a smile to the face of even the average cinephile), are important in solidifying the central theme of What Time Is It There?.  Much like the works in Truffaut’s filmography, What Time Is It There? is, at its core, a film about youth attempting to establish an identity for themselves in a world that feels much bigger and much more impersonal than ever before.

~ CM