Opening on May 9th at the IFC Center in New York, Ming-Liang Tsai’s “I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone” is a study of the lower depths of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Focused on the migrant workers, it shows how “globalization” has created a kind of subproletariat of the sort discussed by Mike Davis in his recently published “Planet of Slums.” But the film is far less interested in social or political analysis than it is in psychological and spiritual dislocations of the sort that being uprooted from one’s homeland induces. Poor workers are desperate to make any kind of connection, even if it only amounts to sharing a bed with someone of either sex.
A scene from “I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone”
Beyond its subject matter, the film is interesting for its minimalist techniques that admittedly won’t be to everybody’s taste. To start with, there is practically no dialogue–a function of the inability of the main characters to speak each other’s language. It also uses fixed camera shots often lasting 5 minutes or so that pan in on mundane aspects of everyday life, such as washing dirty sheets or even of people sleeping. Clearly, it would seem that director Tsai has seen some Andy Warhol somewhere along the line.
The film begins with a petty gangster surrounded by a group of migrant workers. He is selling them “lucky lottery numbers” that come to him in a dream. In exchange for a few dollars, the workers will gain fabulous wealth. If the number doesn’t pay off, they can come to him the next day and get compensated. Hopefully, none of them will bother after we see what happens to one feckless soul (Shiang-chyi Chen) who gives the gangster a piece of blank paper in exchange for a lucky number. When he and his henchmen demand payment, the man looks at them dumbly. What is your problem, the gangster asks? Don’t you speak Malaysian? Are you Chinese? What are you? When he cannot come up with proper answer, they beat him into an inch of his life.
We do not see the beating take place. Tsai is far more interested in human bonding than in violence. We only see the beaten man being nursed by strangers the next day, who have rescued him from the street. They are workers from all over Asia who are living in a tenement building, including Indians, Thais, Chinese and Indonesians. One of them, a Malaysian construction worker named Rawang (Norman Atun), takes special interest in the semi-comatose man and feeds and bathes him back to health. He even shares his bed with him, but does not force himself sexually on the stranger. His affections are genuine, although it is not clear to the audience (or perhaps to Rawang himself) what they amount to.
Across the street from Rawang’s building is a tiny saloon run by a middle-aged woman (Pearlly Chua) and her barmaid Hsiao-kang (Kang-sheng Lee). Hsiao-kang is virtually a slave. When she is not bringing drinks to the table, she is caring after her boss’s paralyzed son who lies mutely in bed all day long–the only movement is in his eyes. He too is played by Shiang-chyi Chen.
As the man who shares Rawang’s bed begins to recover from his beating, he finds himself hanging out at the saloon where he strikes up physical relationship with both women, but prefers the barmaid romantically. The two women begin to regard each other as rivals while Rawang eventually becomes jealous as well. The emotional conflicts are never expressed in words, but in facial expressions or other gestures. Despite its minimalist experimentation, the film has much more in common with silent film. Additionally, the spirit of the film–despite its clear solidarity with social underdogs–is more Bressonian than neorealist.
Director Ming-Liang Tsai, who was born and raised in Malaysia, is considered part of Taiwan’s “Second New Wave”. On March 4, 2007, the Malaysian Censorship Board decided to ban “I don’t want to sleep alone” because the film depicted the country “in a bad light.” Since the final 15 or so minutes takes place in a toxic haze brought on by rainforest fires in Indonesia (and blamed by the government on fires set in abandoned buildings by migrant workers), it is easy to understand why the authoritarians appointed by Mahathir Mohamad might see things that way.
Ming-Liang Tsai
Ang Lee is considered the most prominent member of this school. One can certainly see some similarities between “I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone” and “Brokeback Mountain”. For a perceptive study of Ming-Liang Tsai’s work and an interview, I recommend the World Socialist Website, which remains one of the best sources of serious radical commentary on film:
David Walsh: My impression is that you both care for the characters, and yet at the same time are critical of them. I’m wondering if that is correct.
Ming-Liang Tsai: I’m generally very sympathetic towards them. Most of the time I must admit I don’t even understand them. So my attitude in treating them is very objective. I’m making an attempt to try to get close to these people.
DW: This is not a social milieu which you’re part of.
TM: Actually, it is. In all of my work I deal with people who are on the fringes of society. My father was a farmer and later he had his own little stall. So I feel very close to the common person. I’m not interested in people who are rich. So whenever I shoot something, whenever I get close to people like those in the film, I feel very good. At the same time, I have a very strong belief that every individual is very hard to understand.
