Touching the Millennium

The Nostalgic Impulse of Tsai Ming-liang’s The Hole

Abstract

By taking a close look at the forms and cinematic strategies of Tsai Ming-liang’s 1998 film The Hole, this essay intends to identify the nostalgic subtext that emerges from the tensions generated by different temporal/diegetic levels of representation. Using proper citation mechanisms, the film dialogues with the memory of the century that ends, while projecting into the near future–the overly symbolic year 2000–the anxieties of the present, ultimately proposing a way out through human unmediated connection. Relying on scene analysis, the text will invoke thinkers from cultural studies, film studies, politics, history, philosophy and sociology as well as objects from the visual arts and fiction literature, to create an ample mesh of references that can help contextualize Tsai’s gesture as a filmmaker of its time.