The second full-length film by a young Swiss director, awarded the Special Jury Award in Locarno in the competition “Cineasti del presente” – devoted to discoveries and young artists from around the world – is a gentle, poetic look at night work in Taipei, a vibrant, growing metropolis and the capital of Taiwan. Not only do we look at pictures from the life of Mr. Kuo and his wife, Lin, but we can also feel the atmosphere of a large Asian city at night and its outskirts, i.e. places where nature collides with civilization.
Nicole Vögele in her neomodernictic in spirit documentary is not looking for a sensation. The camera will not find itself where rich nightlife takes place, where colorful clubs are bursting of crowds, nor will it follow dark alleys in an attempt to find a way into the criminal underworld. The director heads her gaze towards an unattractive job at a small night diner. She gives the voice to her heroes and the city, limiting her role to being a silent, anonymous observer. This silent presence blurs its tracks, becoming almost an act of voyeurism. In Closing Time, this view is a binder that combines observations of unprofitable and difficult work, an attempt to stay in the conditions of wild capitalism, and the ruthless conquest of nature by the civilization of mindless consumption. Extra-urban green spaces are in Vögele’s film as from a dream order, from semi-conscious visions of those for whom even these seemingly close urban boundaries are unreachable.
The young artist can also catch something that seems to be a recurring motif of Far Eastern cinema and more generally – an element that characterizes the region’s societies. The film’s title not only means the moment of closing a modest restaurant, just before dawn – before sunrise will break the darkness of the night – but also approaching the end – the collapse of the world in which accelerated capitalism orders its cogs to rust in the lightless eternal night filled with work. When Mr. Kuo goes to the market again to buy fresh vegetables and fish, we hear his conversation with the shopkeeper. Apparently, because of the drought, the harvest was so bad that all goods are imported. The magic of a long shot for a single, tiny, fresh momentum splashes when the camera moves away, allowing us to see the whole image: a green leaf grows from an overturned, rotting trunk tipped over an urban road. It will be taken away soon.
The young director casually catches this kind of cracks in the reality of nightlife. On the one hand, it is filled with Sisyphean work, on the other – the desire to live in a world where there is no shortage of sunlight. There is no hope. It is not possible to return to the day before the night (do we know anything other than the night?). There is only a vague idea, visions of longing for a better tomorrow.
The slow, beautiful (though grim) poetics of Closing Time brings to mind, on the one hand, Godfrey Reggio’s “qatsi trilogy” – an amazing musical and lyrical study of the condition of modern man and the world – on the other hand, the work of another documentary filmmaker enjoying slow cinema, Ulrike Ottinger. Vögele, like Ottinger, is not afraid of slow spots and boredom. It allows you to get used to the pace of life in a big city and with moments of rest reminiscing of mild, oneiric visions. This is a film for slow cinema lovers, those who love Far Eastern cinema, as well as for those whose rebellion against the oppressive world order is buzzing behind a calm, tired facade.
The light of the first morning rays is blurred in the last shots of the film, in the grayed out waves of the sea tide. It is impossible to guess whether the city will ever be lit by dawn.
