- 洞 (The Hole)
8/3/22 (Wed)
An apocalyptic musical, not a crowded genre, by Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang. It was made in 1997 as part of a French series envisioning the upcoming millennium, when the big talk was the Y2K bug that was supposed to upend the world economy. Tsai instead imagined a full-on viral pandemic traced to cockroaches that turns victims into bug-like crazies who crawl on their hands and knees and shun the light. The radio says that French scientists have termed it the Taiwan Virus (in the days before you could be canceled for such). The vision of a viral outbreak is the polar opposite of that in the later Contagion, where people were swarming chaotically in a brutal battle for dwindling resources. Here the focus is the loneliness of quarantined individuals and the need for connection. From the perspective of the past two years, the Taiwanese film proves more prophetic.
sekenbanashi 