White Heads: thoughts on seeing "Three Times"

Last Sunday I went to Hou Hsiao- Hsien's new film THREE TIMES at my favorite theatre, the 99 seat house at the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. More a screening room than a theatre it's a jewel of a room... comfortable, intimate, it seems to wrap around you, putting you in the mood for feeling, thinking, receiving. The film started out awkwardly, returning to the same annoying angle in a pool room where Shu Qi, lead player in all three of the film's segments, worked as a waitress, repeatedly showing us she (and the director) knew nothing about the game. Pool is huge in parts of Asia, particularly in Taiwan and the Phillipines so Hou Hsiao- Hsien had resources he chose not to exploit. I wondered why and that distracted me from a film which demanded patience. But patience was rewarded. This is a film everyone should see. It's about delicate moments of feeling which most critics would call "small". To me they're not small. They are the essential DNA, the organic bottom line. We may imagine a wider, more sensational world "out there", but most of us have little real contact with it. And to the extent that we feel that reality is "out there" and not all around us, we ignore our most precious connections. The first story, set in 1966, is about shy lovers who finally hold hands, at the last moment. perhaps, they will ever have together. The second story circa 1911 is about a prostitute in an upper class bordello who waits, silently, for a lover's "plans" for her. The fact that he has none is never stated, shown only in his face where we see he knows his silence spells doom for her hopes in life. The third story subtitled "A Time for Youth" set in 2005 ends where it begins, with two modern, liberated, beautiful young people on a motorcycle zooming through freeway traffic. Their "liberation" is expressed in free sex, drugs, sado-masochistic snapshots and a demi-mondish immersion in what their pop music describes as "true" feelings. It is devastatingly sad. It made me think of Oshima's REALM OF THE SENSES where lovers learn that death is the final sexually obsessive high. When I walked into the theatre, the house was full. Of white heads. I saw a sea of grey hair, huddled together for thought, for sensibility, for hope that intelligence could still play a part in the cinema. It made me glad... and sad. Why wasn't the theatre filled with young people, with the hip hop generation? This is not an easy question. The answer I'd give is that the times don't lead the young toward art like this. Our culture is not yet ready for Hou Hsiao- Hsien. We're too loud. We're too brash. We're not heedful of the "small". Why should we be? We're consumers. We're invincible, never defeated in war, plenty of plastic in the wallet. The opium smoked in those bordellos of old is a bum trip set up against video games, iPods and camera cell phones which digitally document a cheerful descent into the action movie of our national life.

R.N.