Tsai Ming-Liang's enigmatic and meditative What Time is it There? uses a recent death and a chance encounter to explore the emotional instability of three characters, as each attempt to resolve their problems and escape their melancholy by creating illusions to help them deal with the rift between their existing and desired states.  The simple encounter between Hsiao-Kang and Shiang-Chyi at the beginning of the film where he eventually decides to sell her his watch that she wanted so desperately, creates the expectations for a blossoming romance or fateful reunion, but the focus drastically shifts instantaneously once an almost immeasurable distance is created between the two when she leaves for Paris the following day.  Hsiao-Kang's mother is having difficulty accepting the death of her husband and her aching heart can only be comforted with repetitious religious ceremonies and the belief that her husband will reappear as a reincarnation of a living creature within her home.  The three stories are intrinsically linked through their brief interactions, but the films distanced, observatory approach prevents them from ever being tied together by convenient narrative strands.

Tsai is more interested in observing their actions than turning them into a cohesive narrative.  The long stretches with no dialogue or music are filled with long shots that capture the essence of their suffering through small gestures and their increasingly desperate attempts to fill their emotional voids in unhealthy ways.  Hsiao-Kang sets all of the clocks in his home to Paris time and after finding the illusory act comforting, trecks around the city changing the time on all of the clocks.  The tedious task is the equivalent of busy work and provides him the opportunity of catharsis, but is only a way of rejecting his reality by falsely bridging the gap between himself and Shiang-Chyi.  His blindness to his own actions is made clear when he ironically accuses his mother of the very same thing, as he finds her covering all the windows to create a more inviting atmosphere for her husbands return from the after-life.

In Paris, Shiang-Chyi is dealing with the same feeling of dislocation, but her attempts at resolution are through manipulating space rather than time.  Similar to Charlotte in Lost in Translation, she is a lost outsider in a strange, uncomfortable environment.  As she travels around the city covered in heavy winter clothes and forced to drag her luggage from one inn to the next, she finds solace in a woman who appears much like her and speaks the same language.  The suffocating environment around here is too strange and frightening to adapt to, so she resorts to seeking the familiar and comfortable to avoid confronting the unknown.  It is unclear whether her visit is a short vacation or extended visit, but either way, she is unable to confront the rift caused by her geographic displacement and finds herself lost and alone.  Tsai weaves these three separate stories together to create a powerful statement on the universality of suffering and alienation.  Through matching shots and clever, subtle coincidences, he relates the experiences of these three characters that, for the most part, exist in different universes.  At times it is quite depressing, but the film's understated humor and relatable character's steer us towards feelings of compassion and understanding, rather than pity.  Tsai's humanity is bursting through the screen and makes for the rare film that is at once intellectual yet emotional, humane yet distant, melancholy yet hopeful.  It is difficult to see the depth of the connections in a single viewing, but I look forward to another challenging experience when I revisit it in the future.