The River – Heliu (1997)

Directed by: Tsai Ming-liang | 116 minutes | drama | Actors: Miao Tien, Lee Kang-sheng, Lu Yi-Ching, Hui Ann, Chen Shiang-chyi, Chen Chao-jung, Lu Shiao-Lin, Yang Kuei-Mei

At the beginning of ‘The River’, main character Xiao-Kang accidentally ends up on a film set. When a take with a doll, which must pass for a dead man, fails again and again, he is even assigned a role. He doesn’t have much trouble pretending to be a floating corpse in a river. All life seems to have been drained from him for ages.

The introduction of a film set, the replacement of a doll by a human being and the coincidence that goes with it all: these are all conscious interventions to underline the artificiality of film. However truthful a film may be, film reality is never the same as true reality. What is presented as truth in film is only an apparent truth. Film is no more than a collection of narrative and symbolic constructions. Stripped of external and subjective connotations, film can thus penetrate to the core of what it is to be human. That sounds like a fairly theoretical approach, which is effectively put into practice in ‘The River’.

In his third feature film, Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang brings back the unhappy and loveless family from his debut ‘Rebels of the Neon God’. In that first part, the rigid generational differences between the family members were magnified. In ‘The River’, relations are further strained when son Xiao-Kang develops an unexplained neck condition. His unnamed father, in turn, has to deal with a mysterious leak above his bedroom.

The inability to love is slowly giving way to a hesitant rapprochement because of their misery. The longing for warmth and affection is filled in bit by bit. However, the road to recovery is so long that their pain initially increases rather than decreases. Their characters, no matter how hard they try to open up to each other, maintain the stiff barriers that stand between them. That inner struggle, between turning inward and going out, can be seen as the cause of their problems. The neck pain and the flooding of the room are therefore psychosomatic manifestations of the subconscious rather than true discomfort. No matter how real they feel.

The inner duel between father and son is visualized in a tangible way. The static shots, minimal image movements and the slow tempo have a mesmerizing effect. Although the camera registers as if it were a casual passer-by, it always remains close to the characters. And despite the plot slowly revealing itself, ‘The River’ is unadulterated slow cinema, plenty is happening. That sounds a bit basic, but because the film seeks both realism and the supersensible, it holds the attention well.

When the mutual pain goes from bad to worse, the realization comes that fighting back no longer makes sense. Going with the flow, ‘The River’ is full of water symbolism, that’s all that’s left. And so it is that father and son suddenly find themselves naked in a private sauna of a bathhouse. The room is pitch dark. Without being aware of each other’s presence, they perform reciprocal sexual acts. Their rapprochement, interpretable as a symbolic display of the Freudian subconscious, has reached a climax. Father and son have embraced each other, even if only for a moment.