Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang’s 1998 film, The Hole, is an eerie analog to the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns. It is available to watch until October 1 at the FACETS Virtual Cinema. 

As we predicted not too long ago, the COVID-19 crisis is already beginning to produce a number of films directly inspired by the ongoing global pandemic. Hollywood is reopening and producers simply don’t know what to do with themselves. A heist film/romantic comedy starring Anne Hathaway called Lockdown? Why not!

What is perhaps more interesting and assuredly less depressing than observing the modern state of quarantine filmmaking is exploring what came before it. Tsai Ming-liang’s underrated genre-bending film, The Hole, captures the monotony of quarantine and the desperate attempts we will make to find beauty and joy in loneliness. 

When Taiwan is hit by an unknown virus that causes people to exhibit the bug-like behaviors of crawling on the ground and avoiding light, a government lockdown is put into place to protect healthy citizens. The film follows two unnamed residents of a rapidly dilapidating apartment building as they do their best to stay safe and fend off the virus.

After a plumber does more harm than good to the apartment of The Man Upstairs, leaving a hole in his floor, a portal is opened to the fascinating world of his downstairs neighbor. The pair remains unnamed throughout the film as their voyeuristic relationship turns into something intimate and almost romantic.

Yang Kuei-mei in The Hole (1998)

As one of the great modern names in slow cinema, Ming-liang fills every frame of The Hole with a noticeable weight, despite its lush musical sequences and short 90-minute runtime. By forcing the viewer to sit with the silence and loneliness of the protagonists, he depicts the low-lows that come daily in lockdown when boredom and existential dread set in. 

The advent of modern technology has provided for a media-dense quarantine for many of us. Streaming services and social media platforms help distract from the monotony of never leaving one’s apartment. Imagine a world without the momentary bursts of joy we get from looking at our phones or streaming a film. The Hole provides quite the interesting answer to this rhetorical question. 

The first musical interlude come quite early on in the film. The camera slowly pushes forward as The Woman Downstairs dances and lip syncs to “Calypso” by 50’s pop icon Grace Chang, taking over the frame inch by inch in the brightly lit elevator and red showgirl outfit reminiscent of an entirely different era. 

Yang Kuei-mei in The Hole (1998)

As one of the great modern names in slow cinema, Ming-liang fills every frame of The Hole with a noticeable weight, despite its lush musical sequences and short 90-minute runtime. By forcing the viewer to sit with the silence and loneliness of the protagonists, he depicts the low-lows that come daily in lockdown when boredom and existential dread set in. 

The advent of modern technology has provided for a media-dense quarantine for many of us. Streaming services and social media platforms help distract from the monotony of never leaving one’s apartment. Imagine a world without the momentary bursts of joy we get from looking at our phones or streaming a film. The Hole provides quite the interesting answer to this rhetorical question. 

The first musical interlude come quite early on in the film. The camera slowly pushes forward as The Woman Downstairs dances and lip syncs to “Calypso” by 50’s pop icon Grace Chang, taking over the frame inch by inch in the brightly lit elevator and red showgirl outfit reminiscent of an entirely different era. 

Lee Kang-sheng in Days (2020)

In Justin Chang’s review of The Hole for The Los Angeles Times wrote about Ming-liang and the difficulty of trying to pin him down as one kind of director:

“It’s a useful reminder that Tsai’s films — the latest of which, Days, will premiere this month at the New York Film Festival — are often dutifully filed away under the punishing rubric of “slow cinema,” even when the films themselves are anything but dutiful. Patiently attuned as they are to everyday boredom and melancholy, they are also inflected with music and melodrama, and born of the conviction that the human desire for connection can take the most wondrous forms.”

You can watch The Hole from the FACETS Virtual Cinema until October 1.

Emma Greenleaf is the Marketing Coordinator at FACETS and has been spending quarantine watching the films of Gregg Araki.