What Time Is It There?

What Time Is It There? is a haunting and evocative Taiwanese film released in 2001. The film is directed by acclaimed filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang, featuring Kang-sheng Lee, Shiang-chyi Chen, and Yi-Ching Lu in the lead roles. This beautifully crafted movie is a mesmerizing contemplation of human connection, loneliness, time, and spaces that intertwines realism with symbolic elements.

The film is centered around the character Hsiao-Kang, portrayed compellingly by Kang-sheng Lee. Hsiao-Kang is a street vendor in Taipei who sells watches and clocks. His life is quiet and mundane, characterized by a profound isolation emphasized by the bustling cityscape surrounding him. His solitude is further entrenched when his father dies unexpectedly, leaving him and his mother grappling with their shared grief.

The sudden death of Hsiao-Kang's father introduces the topic of time into the narrative, a constant haunting reminder for both Hsiao-Kang and his mother. This theme resonates with the film's title What Time Is It There? and manifests in various contexts — time as a measure of life and death, as a marker of loss and remembrance, as a question of simultaneity and disjuncture. The film carefully peels back layers of the abstract concept of time, building an atmosphere of silent poignancy.

Another main character is Shiang-chyi Chen, a beautiful and enigmatic woman who encounters Hsiao-Kang on the streets of Taipei. In the interest of her upcoming trip to Paris, she impulsively buys one of Hsiao-Kang's dual-time wristwatches. This meeting, brief and mundane as it is, leaves a lasting impact on Hsiao-Kang. His obsession with the woman takes him on a strange and melancholic journey where he starts resetting all the clocks and watches in Taipei to Paris time, seemingly as a cryptic longing for a connection he barely had.

In Paris, Shiang-chyi is portrayed as a mirror image of Hsiao-Kang's loneliness, her isolation in a foreign land just as palpable. She meanders aimlessly in the city, with lingering shots of the humdrum of her Parisian life interspersed with occasional snippets of the cinematic masterpiece — French director François Truffaut's ‘The 400 Blows.’ This visual intertextuality adds an intriguing meta-filmic layer to the narrative.

The film also explores Hsiao-Kang's mother's--performed by Yi-Ching Lu--grief-filled journey. Her spiritual quest in the aftermath of her husband's death is characterized by rituals and superstitions deeply rooted in Taiwanese culture, giving a local cultural flavor to the melancholia-laden narrative. This spirituality is contrasted with the cold, urban realism of her son's life, creating unexpected narrative tension.

Throughout, What Time Is It There? is heavily laden with symbolic elements, where the pervasive theme of time is contrasted with space, loneliness, isolation, and connections is brought out through minimalistic frames and symbolic use of objects. In the desolate cityscapes of Taipei and the lonely streets of Paris, the alienation of modern urban life is skillfully captured.

Tsai Ming-liang's directorial style in this film is marked by a lack of traditional narrative, allowing the film's spaces, sounds, and visual patterns to do much of the storytelling. The movie resonates with long static takes, forming a montage of finely-detailed minimalist shots. This distinctive stylistic approach gives the film a sense of meditative solemnity and poetic gravitas.

The universality of human loneliness and longing is a salient theme in What Time Is It There?, delivered through a rare blend of humor and heartbreak. Despite the pervasive theme of melancholia, occasional moments of levity are interspersed throughout the film.

With an expertly penned script, directing, and high-caliber performances from its cast, What Time Is It There? leaves an indelible impression on its audience. It is a poignant commentary on the human condition, uprooting notions of time, space, connection, and loneliness. Through its evocative storytelling and exquisite cinematography, the film endears viewers with its powerful depiction of raw human emotions and the universal experiences of loss and longing. With subtlety and depth, it prompts viewers to contemplate the fleeting nature of time and the profound impact of human connections.