Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003), directed by Tsai Ming-liang. Walker Art Center Cinema, Thursday, April 20.

The last time, and first time, I saw Goodbye, Dragon Inn was not only a revelation, but the perfect setting: this perfect film about the last night of a massive movie theater in Taipei was ideally screened at the Willow Creek Cinema, had one other patron, and, other than a lack of dripping ceilings, felt worn out and run down, reflecting what I was watching on screen.

But I had to go see it at the Walker Art Center Cinema because it was being introduced by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, an amazing filmmaker whose movies are astonishing. Somewhat famously, he called Goodbye, Dragon Inn the best movie of the last 125 years. OK, sure, I’ll bite–tell me more.

Well, Mr. Weerasethakul spoke of cinemas, and how this movie may not relate to younger people, who are only used to either streaming or seeing movies in cineplexes. True. I mean, maybe they can relate, but I can say I grew up seeing movies in those single-screen movie houses, especially the beautiful Ward Theater in downtown Mt. Pleasant, The Broadway Theater (also MP, but not beautiful), the Temple in Saginaw, and even little places like The Odeon in Lansing. I know what it’s like to stand in a long line (for, say, Raiders of the Lost Ark) or to go in when it seems like there’s more people working there than attending the movie (more times than I can count at the end of those theaters’ lives). I loved those theaters, and realized that Weerasethakul was right: I think Goodbye, Dragon Inn moves me more because I’m familiar with that experience.

I’m not experienced with the gay cruising that occurs in the film (unsuccessful and funny as it is), nor had such a massive place to call my own (the Temple in Saginaw was enormous, bigger than the one in the movie, but I didn’t go there very often and never on my own), but the yearning and sadness in Goodbye, Dragon Inn, was palpable.

Because it was at the Walker, there were regulars galore and I saw a bunch of good friends, all of whom adore this little picture, maybe not as much as Weerasethakul (who am I kidding–none of us could approach his admiration). And that made me happy, even as I read today of David Lynch railing against people who watch movies on phones and tablets. Maybe the time of seeing movies in cinemas will die away by the time I’m old. I hope not, I hope younger people realize the joy of watching movies together, but if they don’t like it, they don’t. I’m happy for streaming, because I’d never be able to see a lot of the movies I’ve seen over the years. And I don’t really dig it when people try and claim an experience they love is somehow universal and everyone should love it and how sad is it that these fools don’t know what they’re missing. I get it that people who gripe like that seem like old fuckers who have nothing more than their dusty memories to hold onto.

But still, the theaters are beautiful places, and seeing Goodbye, Dragon Inn, with the cineaste balding twins in the front rows and the old guys who carry bundles of papers and the young hipsters who take in whatever the Walker feeds them and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who seems like a happy, happy kid in this theater, and the guy who looks like he’s Eastern European and always drags his pre-teen daughters to stuff like this (thankfully this movie’s short) and the ebullient curator of film who dresses all in denim and smiles like he’s about to cut into his favorite cake (and perhaps that cake is Goodbye, Dragon Inn)… well, damn it all, if you can’t appreciate this, then maybe I don’t know what to think.

I wish I could find out if Apichatpong Weerasethakul really was seeing this film with subtitles for the first time, as he claimed.