MovieChat Forums > Ni na bian ji dian (2001) Discussion > Trying to find 'solid' meanings in Ming-...

Trying to find 'solid' meanings in Ming-Liang's movies is futile.

posted 18 years ago by anak_d
7 replies | jump to latest

Call me crazy, but I just don't understand people who try to find an EXACT meaning to what the suitcase or the clocks meant in the movie.

This is so "Western", trying to decode feelings into some clear logic.

I'm not saying that the suitcase or whatever doesn't mean anything, but that the feelings this movie is supposed to evoke are of a much more abstract nature.

And also, I also think MANY of them are in fact arbitrary, in total accord to Ming-Liang's tongue-in-cheek style of filmmaking.

[–] friedrich-4 18 years ago

I saw the movie yesterday in a Ming-Liang special in a cinema in Munich together with a Taiwanese friend.

In generally I agree that not every scene in a movie is coding a particular symbol but is more an emoional trigger. But there is no doubt that the director is creating a new world and usually he is expecting certain connections the viewer is constructing. So I think it is not always that easy to distinguish between meaning and expression. Still I don't want movies to be over-interpreted.

In my opinion the clock is a quite too intensive/repeated pattern in this movie to have no meaning. The question is which explanations are reasonable.

I like to hear your opinion to another scene:
Shiang-Chyi (the girl in Paris) is throwing up in a toilette in tis cafe. Her excuse was that she had drunk to much coffee which sounds a bit strange, doen't it? So may taiwanese friend thinks she was pregnant and lesbian (does she really know that before the shown lesbian experiance?) and came to paris to get out of the situation. That's why she is always sad there...

So what do you think?

feo

[–] Shadow1517 18 years ago

I don't think she is pregnant, as future tsai films follow her and dont show anything of this

the lesbian thing, may have truth, but i dont think she is a lesbian so much as she is experimenting/lonely and found someone from where she is and is just trying desperately to make a connection

she may be throwing up ebcause she is so depressed/anxious about the fact that she is so totally alone and without love

i have felt nauseous when depressed or int he midst of a panic attack, and thrown up

during my worst summer i threw up once a day for 3 weeks, due to depression

the clocks, i guess maybe im not thinking enough, just to me represented that he was so lonely, that he was trying to connect to her world, because he felt a connection to her

so then, gradually, it turns itno an obsession of changing all the clocks so that his world will be the same as her, and somehow, distnatly, they are connected

that may also be thinking too much, i try to let the images and emotions carry me

i notice his character in all of tsai's movies (as to me, it seems like he is one character), becomes obsessed (neon god, first he is angry about the destruction of the mirror, then he becomes incredibly obsessed with revenge), in this, he first starts to do little things, like learn about france, and change a few watches and clocks, and it gradually becomes him turning his entire world trying to find her

so sad, so beautiful

i wanted them to meet so much

[–] 18 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Yxklyx 16 years ago

She vomited because she drank too much coffee and she drank too much coffee because that's what you do when you're in Paris - you drink coffee.

[–] twelvepointnine 14 years ago

She drank too much coffee to stay awake during the day because she couldn't sleep due her noisy Parisian upstairs neighbours. And maybe also because she was connected to the Taiwan time through her watch, and not in the sense of a jet-lag. There's a wonderful explanation in another thread considering the significance of not taking objects from people in mourning.

Chaos reigns

[–] s0s 13 years ago

Since the connection between the guy who sold watches and the girl in Paris is one of the main points of interest in this film, could it be that she throws up because he is drinking wine?

The scene in which he is drinking wine on the rooftop is followed directly by her being sick in the toilet, so my first thought was that she felt his sickness.

[–] twelvepointnine 13 years ago

That makes sense.

Chaos reigns