But the cinema of the body implies also a social gest. We see this in how people react to the monk: sometimes with indifference, but other times they stare, try to interact with him, see him as a performer. We are not the only seers in the film, the people in it are voyeurs of something they do and see everyday (walking), but the fact that the monk’s walking is at a different temporality breaks the sensory motor link and affects us: makes us think the unthought. The ceremonialization of the body is at the same time the genesis of a new body (an unknown body); it is the birth of something visible which was hidden from view (Deleuze 201). We, the seers outside the film become the seers inside it, identify with the voyeurs who stare at this monk
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I believe the blandness of Walker is what makes the film so rich and though provoking, it is what give us access to think the unthough with it. The motif of the bland escapes from theory, it cannot be reduced to a concept, but it is not a mystical idea either; it evokes something common to the arts and have been acknowledge by the three schools of thought in China (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism) (Jullien 23). This elusiveness is present in the film; the rhythm of Walker and its main character, a monk that nevertheless is carrying what seems to be fast food, along with the lack of judgments towards any of the situations, fill the film with excessive neutrality. But it is this neutrality what maintain the tension and offers a space for the antinomies and the complexities of the time-image. Blandness is “when different flavors no longer stand in opposition to each other but, rather, abide within plenitude” (24). Modern cinema, for Deleuze, is often leaned towards what might seem a return to primitive forms of cinema, and Ozu is an example of that. In the same way, Tsai Ming-Liang offers to us only fixed shots, in which the main character may or may not be at the center, sometimes blocked by other people or by cars; the images even seem like tests for a future movie. Both Ozu’s and Tsai Ming-Liang’s work is “most difficult to appreciate”, but this is also why it “lends itself to infinite appreciation” (Jullien 24). As in Kleist’s puppets, the blandness of the Monk contains mannequin-like and god-like
I believe the blandness of Walker is what makes the film so rich and though provoking, it is what give us access to think the unthough with it. The motif of the bland escapes from theory, it cannot be reduced to a concept, but it is not a mystical idea either; it evokes something common to the arts and have been acknowledge by the three schools of thought in China (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism) (Jullien 23). This elusiveness is present in the film; the rhythm of Walker and its main character, a monk that nevertheless is carrying what seems to be fast food, along with the lack of judgments towards any of the situations, fill the film with excessive neutrality. But it is this neutrality what maintain the tension and offers a space for the antinomies and the complexities of the time-image. Blandness is “when different flavors no longer stand in opposition to each other but, rather, abide within plenitude” (24). Modern cinema, for Deleuze, is often leaned towards what might seem a return to primitive forms of cinema, and Ozu is an example of that. In the same way, Tsai Ming-Liang offers to us only fixed shots, in which the main character may or may not be at the center, sometimes blocked by other people or by cars; the images even seem like tests for a future movie. Both Ozu’s and Tsai Ming-Liang’s work is “most difficult to appreciate”, but this is also why it “lends itself to infinite appreciation” (Jullien 24). As in Kleist’s puppets, the blandness of the Monk contains mannequin-like and god-like