Waiting 20 years for you
If Stray Dogs really is Tsai’s last film, then The Monk from the Tang Dynasty, a play being performed at the Guangfu Auditorium in Zhongshan Hall, may be the last chance for audiences to approach Tsai.
Tsai has long admired the Tang Dynasty monk Xuanzang. In Tsai’s estimation, Xuanzang’s exploits were amazing but also subversive, a form of rebellion against the world. He cultivated virtue by walking alone through the desert to India to gather Buddhist scriptures, converting bandits who tried to kill him along the way.
In 2011 the National Performing Arts Center sought out Tsai to hold some one-man shows. He selected three actors with whom he had long working relationships, including, of course, Lee Kang-sheng. Tsai gave him a scenario and told him to act himself, Tsai’s father and Xuanzang. That play is Only You. When Lee spent 17 minutes to cross half the stage as the sole figure on it, the tension that he was able to create so moved Tsai that tears filled his eyes: “For 20 years, I’ve waited for you and this moment.”
Tsai watched Lee walk, slowly, confident and unhurried. That youth he had long worked with had transformed into the monk Xuanzang. The actor moved with Xuanzang’s spirit, slowly and in total resistance to this fast-paced age.
Only You sparked Tsai Ming-liang’s three-year “slow long march” series. Lee Kang-sheng transformed into Xuanzang, wearing saffron robes at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels and the Vienna Festival, before returning to Taiwan for the 2014 Taipei Art Festival. Next year he is going to go to Gwangju, South Korea.
When Tsai asked Lee what he was thinking about when walking, Lee said, “I recite the Heart Sutra.”
Tsai first read the Heart Sutra a long time ago. Recently he has often recited or copied out the Diamond Sutra. When facing illness or facing death, or when boarding an airplane, people often recite sutras to calm themselves. That was the original attraction for Tsai. “The sutras have a karmic pull.” But gradually they came to bring him joy, and eventually he came to a greater understanding of them. He no longer recites them for comfort. “There’s nothing to seek, because everything is illusory. The Buddha even tells us that he isn’t saying anything.”
That’s similar to Tsai’s films: they say everything and they say nothing. They raise no questions and provide no answers. They are flowers reflected in a mirror or the moon’s image on a lake, nothing more nor less than projections of the mind. When Tsai takes this point of view, he fills with a sense of contentment. Malaysia nourished his childhood. Taiwan gave him creative freedom. His films aren’t big money makers, but he has had films to shoot for more than 20 years and has been able to collaborate with like-minded people. He has delved into the core issues of our age. He is also a collector of old things, and has even opened Director Tsai’s Café Galerie. It is if he were living at the edges of a ruined city.
He wants to tell people that if he really doesn’t shoot any more films, please don’t say he has given up the battle and pity him, because he is happily passing his days the way he wants to. If one day he does shoot another film, even a commercial film, please don’t feel that he has degraded himself. Such a move on his part would simply mean that he felt like playing with something new.
“Everything that has marks is deceptive and false. If all marks are not seen as marks, then this is perceiving the Tathāgata.” That is the realm that Tsai is headed toward.
After the Louvre commissioned Tsai to shoot Face, he decided to focus on films for the collections of art museums.