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The Hole - Tsai Ming-liang's Film
The symbolic significance of an image of a hole offers much for interpretation. Especially in the context of a story that studies a man and woman void of a romantic relationship in their lives. The title of the film, The Hole, itself underlies the multifaceted meanings that a hole represents. In a literal sense, the hole is an opening in a man's floor and women's ceiling. It becomes a portal connecting their lives through which the male character helps the woman transcend her mundane existence and in so doing, also his own. The Hole becomes a catalyst forcing both characters to take action in fixing it, which figuratively enables them to fill a hole, or void in their lives. At first it is she who quite desperately tries to fix the hole by plugging it with a mop or taping it up. This coincides with her constant need to clean up the leaky plumbing from above, which also causes the plumber to make the hole. In contrast the man does nothing about the hole and even contributes to pouring, or puking liquids through it. They do not achieve their shared transcendence until he makes the effort to clean up his end of the hole. The transcendence is seen in one drastic action at the end of the film in which the man lifts the downtrodden woman through the hole. This moment is at the peak of his straightening up his apartment and when she is sickened, thus giving up trying to stop the leaking. As she lies depleted in the darkness beneath the hole, the man's hand comes through like a beam of light. First holding a glass of water, which she revives herself with and then he offers his hand lifting her up. The scene cuts to the two slow dancing in formal wear in a dream-like sequence. This final scene ensures that what was shown to be missing in their lives was the romance of another to love. This transcendence to love in the film is unique to the human experience as the film portrays a contrast between animal and human life. Early on in the film, the man is visually connected to a cat that roams his workplace. Just as beer cars liter his apartment, he leaves cans of cat food scattered all over the floor at his workplace too. As he suffers his lower form of existence, he sustains the life of the cat by feeding it, a lower life form. He is also associated to a lower life form when he first starts to clean up around the hole. As he wipes up the floor he hops from place to place in the stance of an amphibian. The woman is also placed in a lower status of life towards the end of the film when she is infected by the epidemic. The virus causes her to crawl around the floor like a roach, scurrying to exist. It is at this lowest form of existence that he helps her to transcend into an idealized or almost divine state. This is implied by the shot composition of his hand reaching through the hole with the light piercing the darkness of her apartment below. This dynamic of him helping her transcend is developed earlier in another scene as they stand outside their apartments. The shot composition has her screen-left in the foreground in a low-angle shot with him high above on another platform. Though he is seen at a higher level, he is framed behind bars to imply a prison like state. This is necessary in stating that he cannot achieve a more fulfilling existence without her, as in he is transcended by lifting her up. Hence the dream-like dance scene in the end, where it takes two to tango when we are going to fulfill our holes in life. Overall, The Hole impresses one with the philosophy that humans are capable of reaching a higher existence in caring for our surroundings and helping those who may be right under our nose.
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Contributor's Note
Heady Brew Productions is a screenwriting collaboration between Chris Valderrama and Jason Cangialosi, who write original screenplays, also providing ghostwriting and script revision services, where cinematic visions are infused with creative savvy.
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A Taiwanese Cinema Studies Essay About Tsai Ming-liang's Film
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