Watch Your Step
Claude Wang/Homegreen Films
MOVIE REVIEW
Abiding Nowhere (2024)
“Abiding Nowhere” was commissioned from director Tsai Ming-liang by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art; and once you know this the movie makes complete sense. For it is less of a movie in the traditional sense and more of an art installation, the kind that could easily play on a loop in an exhibit. And while this will absolutely limit its appeal, “Abiding Nowhere” also offers a chance for reflection that is the film’s entire point.
For the movie, such as it is, shows a man in red monk’s robes (Lee Kang-sheng, who also did the calligraphy in the titles) walking slowly, deliberately and with bare feet in various parts of Washington. Every part of every motion requiring him to take a step forward is done with care and consideration; and when it’s done on a sidewalk or in a public place such as the main train station the passersby give him a wide berth. There are also brief segments following another man (Anong Houngheuangsy) as he does things including walking normally up some stairs, cooking himself some ramen and then sitting down and eating it. You regard, and you reflect.
There’s a Tom Robbins book in which a character is a living statue, whose form of artistic expression is in that he does a complete circle every day, in movements so slow that no one notices him moving. The hero of the book becomes obsessed with this living statue, this person whose art is making something which is, by design, unnoticeable. “Abiding Nowhere” is art very much along those lines. Cinematographer and editor Chang Jhong-yuan somehow makes the walker’s deliberate choices rivetingly watchable, to the point that the audience with which I saw it at the Berlinale cheered it when it was over. One might not perhaps go that far, but it’s fascinating to see a film designed to make you consider how you move through the world on your living feet.
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