Alongside his older colleagues Edward Young and Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang - born in 1957, grew up in Malaysia and moved to Taiwan in his early 20s - is considered one of the most important representatives of new Taiwanese cinema. Tsai's almost hour-long cinematic meditation experiment Journey to the West (Xi You) is the sixth in a series of films made under the collective title The Walker, which began in 2011 with a performance of his play “Only You”, in which Tsai's favorite actor Lee Kang-sheng crossed the stage extraordinarily slowly.
Here, Lee moves through Marseille at a snail's pace in the costume of a Buddhist monk as a symbol of contemplation made flesh. Literally. The figure refers to the famous Chinese pilgrim monk Xuanzang, who traveled to India in the seventh century to study Buddhism. But even without this knowledge, one immediately understands what the sharp contrast between the super slow-motion monk and the undiminished hustle and bustle of the big city depicts: absolute presence, being in the moment, existence in its purest form. A suggestion to pause and reflect that seems to go unheard for a long time. Will anyone accept it after all?
