Tsai Ming-liang's The Hole isn't necessarily the easiest film to watch, particularly for those brought up in a deluge of Hollywood filmmaking. There are long passages of stillness and quiet without any action. There is almost no narrative. And yet, The Hole is an intensely rewarding experience. Set in the last days before the year 2000, most of Taiwan has been evacuated after the outbreak of a terrible disease which causes people to become "human cockroaches." Two people remain after much of the population has left: an unnamed man and an unnamed woman who lives in the apartment below his. One day a plumber breaks a hole in the man's floor, thereby creating a portal between their apartments and their very lives. Ming-liang uses these characters and their apartments to paint powerful portraits of isolation, loneliness, and emptiness. The film is interspersed with musical numbers set to the songs of Grace Chang. Seemingly materializing out of the ether, these upbeat numbers seem like tulpas of the man and woman's inner desperation, hopes, and dreams. Just as musical numbers are used in musicals to give voice to their characters' most powerful emotions and feelings, the musical numbers in The Hole illustrate the emotions and feelings that the characters cannot express. These scenes are admittedly jarring, but as the film goes on the spectator begins to understand their role in the overall technique of the film. The Hole is a touching film that exists purely on its own terms, both ugly and beautiful, wise and enigmatic.
8/10
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