There’s a hole in the floor of an apartment in Taipei. It’s an absolute mess for the occupant and his downstairs neighbor. Though they’ve never really met, they discover each other through their awkward circumstance, with each episode inspiring irritation, which turns into hatred, which turns into… Well, you’ll have to see the movie.
Tsai Ming-liang wrote and directed THE HOLE as an experiment, bringing his vision of the year 2000 to the screen. Instead of going sci-fi or hard dystopian, it depicts a society where people live so close, and in such harsh conditions, that they can’t even yearn properly.
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Show art by Emily Csuy. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: “Oh! Calypso” performed by Grace Chang from the THE HOLE soundtrack.
Timestamps
0:00 - Episode 396: THE HOLE (1998)
2:15 - Whadja Watch This Week?
14:44 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary
17:12 - A movie about the 2000s
24:45 - The dramatic, comedic, absurd mood
26:32 - Water, disease, disenfranchisement, and the slow decay of gravity
34:20 - The human need for solitude vs. the human desire for connection
41:16 - The surprising musical numbers
49:45 - The reuse of actors, characters, and settings in Tsai Ming-liang films
54:39 - Why he leg through hole?
57:23 - Xining Public Housing, the actual ‘haunted’ apartment building
1:04:46 - The consummative, but not necessarily victorious, ending
1:12:47 - The Junk Drawer
1:18:09 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1998
