The Hole

Rating:
Summary: The development of a hole...
Review: The government wants to quarantine an area after an outbreak of Taiwan Fever and they will turn off the water in the area after New Years Eve of 2000, which is seven days away. However, some people refuse to leave their homes as they have lived there for a long time. A young man, who lives in the quarantined area, goes about his mundane life as he feeds the cat, goes to work, eats, and sleeps. When the plumber knocks on his door due to a water leakage in the apartment complex it is about to little by little change his daily life style. The plumber creates a small hole that leads to the apartment downstairs where a young woman lives. The young woman is first very annoyed by the hole in her ceiling, but as time goes by she begins to communicate with the young man upstairs. Hole is not an ordinary cinematic experience as it uses shots that seem to go on forever, which instill a feeling of boredom and lifelessness. These long shots are enhanced by the rain that keeps falling non-stop in the background creating an illusion of a invisible wall that no one can escape. Simultaneously the radio and TV are spitting out threatening information in regards to the rare disease in the area, which is terrorizing the minds of the audience. The director Tsai creates an artificial imprisonment where the audience can fall into the same trap as the characters as they struggle with their coexistence through the hole, which is occasionally interrupted by colorful hallucination like scenes of song and dance. This leaves the audience with a remarkable cinematic experience as they view the development of the hole.

Rating:
Summary: I really should read Amazon before I buy anything at all!
Review: The reviewer below had some great advice: "OK maybe to see once, not to own." I own this DVD, spurred on by some egregious advice in a Jonathan Rosenbaum review which ignited my interest; and despite some Jobean patience and the use of heavy stimulants I cannot get through its grating pacing, its alienation effects, its submarined plot. Its hintings of premillenial urban anomie is far more suggestive in reviews about the movie than in the actual viewing experience, and I would direct other curious or hysterical viewers to heed the heroic Amazonian's advice and RENT IT. Take it from me, my sisters and brothers, because I bought it and I've wept ever since.

"The Hole" is one of a series of "Year 2000" films commissioned by La Sept Arte commemorating the (then scary) millennium; its brethren include Hal Hartley's "Book of Life" and a Spanish director's entry, "The Night That I Was Born." (There's a French entry as well, which I think is called "Les Commisionaires" or "Les Communards" or something; sorry, I don't remember.) I can enthusiastically recommend the charming, if light, "The Night I Was Born" -- especially over "The Hole."

Rating:
Summary: I really should read Amazon before I buy anything at all!
Review: The reviewer below had some great advice: "OK maybe to see once, not to own." I own this DVD, spurred on by some egregious advice in a Jonathan Rosenbaum review which ignited my interest; and despite some Jobean patience and the use of heavy stimulants I cannot get through its grating pacing, its alienation effects, its submarined plot. Its hintings of premillenial urban anomie is far more suggestive in reviews about the movie than in the actual viewing experience, and I would direct other curious or hysterical viewers to heed the heroic Amazonian's advice and RENT IT. Take it from me, my sisters and brothers, because I bought it and I've wept ever since.

"The Hole" is one of a series of "Year 2000" films commissioned by La Sept Arte commemorating the (then scary) millennium; its brethren include Hal Hartley's "Book of Life" and a Spanish director's entry, "The Night That I Was Born." (There's a French entry as well, which I think is called "Les Commisionaires" or "Les Communards" or something; sorry, I don't remember.) I can enthusiastically recommend the charming, if light, "The Night I Was Born" -- especially over "The Hole."

Rating:
Summary: Hole of loneliness
Review: Tsai ming liang's hole is a film about loneliness that is set somewhere in Taipei where people are advised to leave by government. Reason is a A disease that pass from the bugs which causes strange changes in people's life styles like fear of light.
We witness the main character as the lonely person who refuses to leave the flat which he lives.Only a hand ful people remain in the area and the place he works is also deserted too and only open shop seems to be his. He is visited by a friendly cat and a customer who asks for products that are no longer sold in the market. Later in order to get some pipe work done, a hole is dug in his flat thus enabling him to indirectly communicate with the lady that lives alone downstairs.He later starts to live around this hole in his room.
Tsai Ming Liang uses cameras and colours in order to create an environment that is lonely, very hot and soaked with sweatthat is only washed by rain once a while. Interestingly, he uses some old style cha cha songs (by a famous Chinese singer) and dance accompanied to it in order to inform more about the characters lives somehow. For example during those sessions we learn that the lady character is divorced .( the words like, dont call me tiger lady etc)
Film also has some science fiction tendencies due to the strange illness that turns people in to 'roaches living in dark, using hands as extra feet etc and taken out of their small dark places by paramedics. But again it is a an art house film and especially not made for the everyone's liking, do not expect much about this genre.
In short , hole is an interesting movie and a good watch. But it is not your average Chinese movie even in art house standarts. It may dissapoint and bore some people but may also amuse many others.

Rating:
Summary: Hole of loneliness
Review: Tsai ming liang's hole is a film about loneliness that is set somewhere in Taipei where people are advised to leave by government. Reason is a A disease that pass from the bugs which causes strange changes in people's life styles like fear of light.
We witness the main character as the lonely person who refuses to leave the flat which he lives.Only a hand ful people remain in the area and the place he works is also deserted too and only open shop seems to be his. He is visited by a friendly cat and a customer who asks for products that are no longer sold in the market. Later in order to get some pipe work done, a hole is dug in his flat thus enabling him to indirectly communicate with the lady that lives alone downstairs.He later starts to live around this hole in his room.
Tsai Ming Liang uses cameras and colours in order to create an environment that is lonely, very hot and soaked with sweatthat is only washed by rain once a while. Interestingly, he uses some old style cha cha songs (by a famous Chinese singer) and dance accompanied to it in order to inform more about the characters lives somehow. For example during those sessions we learn that the lady character is divorced .( the words like, dont call me tiger lady etc)
Film also has some science fiction tendencies due to the strange illness that turns people in to 'roaches living in dark, using hands as extra feet etc and taken out of their small dark places by paramedics. But again it is a an art house film and especially not made for the everyone's liking, do not expect much about this genre.
In short , hole is an interesting movie and a good watch. But it is not your average Chinese movie even in art house standarts. It may dissapoint and bore some people but may also amuse many others.

Rating:
Summary: Unique, wonderful, charming, funny, disturbing--what a film!
Review: Tsai Ming-Liang is truly a unique talent. In The Hole he's envisioned life at the end of the 20th century in Taipei, beset by a bizarre combination of endless rain and a very weird viral plague that leaves its victims sneezing, crawling around like roaches, and avoiding the light. In a rundown apartment building live a single man and, directly underneath him, a single woman, both in their late 20s/early 30s.

The ceaseless rain ruins everything--wallpaper, mattresses, you name it. The juxtaposition of this constantly dreary environment with continuous loneliness gives rise, in the heart of the young woman, to fantasy sequences in which the songs of Grace Chang, a popular Taiwanese singer, are enacted, musical revue-style, by the woman and backup singers/dancers in appropriately glitzy attire. These astonishing interludes, coming completely out of nowhere, make the viewer sit up and take notice--here is a filmmaker with some serious filmmaking chops, no question.

The title refers to the opening left in the young man's floor by a clumsy plumber who's come to, supposedly, fix the faulty pipes in the man's apartment. He never returns to fix the hole and through it, in the course of the film, comes bug spray, a leg, an arm, and, eventually, the young woman herself. Seeing a leg dangling from your ceiling--from the perspective of the downstairs apartment resident--is surreal to say the least.

This is one of the most creative love stories in cinema and Tsai Ming-Liang should be heartily congratulated for doing what so few filmmakers these days are doing--taking chances to a remarkable degree, giving in film what so few can give--real inspiration based on creativity that knows no limits.

A terrific film that should be seen by those who love cinema for what it really can do. Very highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Hole lot of Confusion
Review: Well,

Don't really know what to say about this movie!! Not what I expected at all!

The best I can figure is that this is some twisted tribute, to the music of the late (?) Grace Chang.

Interesting does not even begin to describe it The Camp dance sequences, seem to have no relevance to the main storyline, except to introduce an element of the ridiculuos and to send you into fits of laughter.

The Storyline, well, that is even more bizarre, Guy lives in run-down apartment, plumber, who's doing the girl downstairs, knocks whole in floor, girl downstairs falls for guy upstairs!!

Well, that's all I can really say. The movie has it's value, I don't think I have laughed at a movie so hard for ages, not because it was funny, but because it was SO TACKY!!

maybe If I understood chinese I might have liked it more, but just not my style!!

Rating:
Summary: I will have to save 105 bucks to just see "The Book of Life"
Review: When i order the Book of Life on DVD it didn't arrive, beacuse it wasn't aviable, but now i have to pay 101 bucks to see The Book of Life on DVD, altough i don't know if i am going to see the other 7 films, but it will be great to see the whole collection, but it depends on the content of the other 7 films, i will buy it until April.