Rather than being dislocated by war or language or shifting social structures the characters here have been swept up in a slipstream of capital, bound to an unseen but inescapable current. Here the distance between spaces, like city and country, is sort of collapsed, and everything is unified by powerlessness and some ephemeral sense of loss.

Hou Hsiao-Hsien makes every other director look like parents filming their kids sixth-grade piano recital.

"I like keeping things unpredictable" one remarks in the beginning, but by the end spontaneity isn't so much a choice, but a necessity for these people

Wandering as the only means of survival.

yeahhhh I can’t believe how much of an improvement this was on just one rewatch. idk how I only went 3.5 before but sometimes a movie hits different that second time. what atmosphere, this is now my new fav movie by HHH. he really made an existential crime film that touches on urban-rural dynamics, immaturity, and economic frustration. keep moving, or die trying. the motorcycle scene, through the jungle, is GOAT-level. and the tension in that final act...an excellent film. 

I’m reminded of the passage from a personal favourite of mine, Days of Being Wild:

“I've heard that there's a kind of bird without legs that can only fly and fly, and sleep in the wind when it is tired. The bird only lands once in its life... that's when it dies.“

Chinese Cinema. 
Hou Hisao-hsien ranked. 

Not HHH‘s best, but I loved the vibe and the soundtrack. I can see this grow on me with each rewatch, however.

Luxuriously languid, meandering crime story, with a minimum of crime and a maximum of hanging out, driving around, and waiting for something to happen.

(...) O concreto e o material do cinema entram no domínio do metafísico, no mundo invisível que perfaz os sonhos e o conhecimento e nos ajuda a reagir ao mundo visível e material. - João Palhares, folha da sessão de Louis Lumière no Cineclube Lucky Star.

Small-time Taiwanese criminals meander from one money-making scheme to another, hoping and dreaming of finding happiness in Shanghai, should they ever actually get there. Slow and stylish, moody and melancholy, I undoubtedly would have connected with it in a bigger way had the image quality on the DVD not been so low. I don’t think there’s any filmography I’d rather have restored than Hou’s.

Swallowed up by a southern city, trying to get back to Taipei. Gao, Flatty & Pretzel wander to live, from city to city and job to job. Hou fills the gaps in their story with moving landscape shots, from the back of a train or the windshield of a car, set to rock music, usually. These shots lend the movie a sense of wandering, too, of perpetual movement. Only one of these shots puts our trio in the landscape, riding motorcycles on a rural road. And it's this shot that feels like possibility, because the characters have escaped the otherwise still camera and are free in the transience of the landscape. Suddenly: agency, mobility, transcendence.

An opening up to the world of listless wandering. Searching for significance, but once found, a struggle to actualize. To open a restaurant. To fulfill one's father's dreams. To navigate strife and challenges, cosmically foretold. What's gained in this journey? Shuffling through landscapes of dissociated artifacts of modernity and the abstracted, purposeless youth. Gao has meaning, his life has an aim, but The processes he has to move through to validate his existence become alienating and obstructive. Constant interruptions, incessant hindrances that halt any form of existential growth because he exists in a perpetual collision with others' sollipsisms and conceited political structures that minimize and reduce.

É curioso
Me faltou um pouco de história pro filme no geral, um conflito mais visível, mas o terceiro atom compensa

Great movie pretty bad storytelling

Watched for International Cinema class

Goodfellas with all the dramatic parts left out. A gangster film that rarely feels like a gangster film. Only HHH can get away making films like this, and he's damn good at it.

yeahhhh I can’t believe how much of an improvement this was on just one rewatch. idk how I only went 3.5 before but sometimes a movie hits different that second time. what atmosphere, this is now my new fav movie by HHH. he really made an existential crime film that touches on urban-rural dynamics, immaturity, and economic frustration. keep moving, or die trying. the motorcycle scene, through the jungle, is GOAT-level. and the tension in that final act...an excellent film. 

I’m reminded of the passage from a personal favourite of mine, Days of Being Wild:

“I've heard that there's a kind of bird without legs that can only fly and fly, and sleep in the wind when it is tired. The bird only lands once in its life... that's when it dies.“

- i kept spacing out while watching this... sayang na low res yung first watch ko nito kasi ang ganda niya visually pero andali lang magdrift away huhuz note to self to wait for this to be restored (sana naman) before rewatching. and w better subs din sana unless sadya talaga na walang subs yung ibang parts ;-;
- ganda ng long takes, favorite ko yung train shot sa simula nung dinaanan nila yung shifen tsaka yung karaoke
- since eto tsaka 'a city of sadness' pa lang napapanood ko kay lolo hou ramdam na ramdam ko yung ~continuity~
- the guy that did the music for this is the same guy that does the music for jia zhangke's films... tapos umarte din siya dito grabe 很利害
- ka-wavelength ng 'as tears go by' ni wkw nang slight but then again ig sadyang common yung ganong gangster + subordinate relationship

This is perhaps the closest I have seen Hou Hsiao-Hsien get to a straight genre picture. (The Assassin is so much more about its aesthetic and mood that it barely counts.) Of course, being him, this movie is still pretty languid and desultory, though there are fairly shocking moments of violence, which only serves to underline the danger that the characters have to constantly live with. And that soundtrack has to be the most surprising element of this picture.

Score and cinematography are very good. Also that motorbike ride sequence was class.

I read what some people have to say about this film on here and I gotta say I fuck with how mfs are referring to Hou Hsiao Hsien as HHH.

For anyone that’s every wanted to be someone, or thought they should be someone. Small town, small country, small time, going nowhere. Rhymes of roads to and away. Rhymes of colour and light and mood. The first (and only other) time i saw this the dvd had no audio. I watched it anyway because i’m dumb. What a waste. What a soundtrack. I mean 90’s alternative and industrial isn’t exactly my thing, but what a sound to lay all of this over.

nothing much happens but it's chill,