Where Am I Going?

There is a place where stop motion isn't, instead film in miniature. The movement of light through a window is no more artificial for the fact that the window and the pigeon behind it are differently sculpted to catch the deliberate passage of the sense of sun. Shadows form behind those wings and the turning blades of the wall mounted fan with the same surety and sense of solidity as the rattling from the train as it rumbles past.

The train bears the marks of imitation, electric though at least once it's not diesel but hobbyist grade transformer. If not steady hands, pushing it forward by the same mechanisms that drive pedals and scooters and the menacing traffic lights. After a few moments to lull us, the perfectly imperfect egg frying to a crisp lace in a pan, an absolute sense of a one room apartment by the tracks, a clarity that indicates why it is condemned and why, despite that, it is still home.

"Anyone needs screen mending or window changing" is the text on the side of the bicycle cart. Interpolation, barriers to vision. Distortion. The bird bubbled by light bricks in the break of dawn, that cross crosswalk watcher,

Reflections, shadows, these are not easy things to shoot, harder when every aspect must be constructed. The frames tick by at the same rate as the black cast of approaching sunset indicates the world turning underneath a stationary wheel. I smiled wide with delight at the puppeteer, the textures of actual cloth and the contrasts between them on man, temple spirit, and puppet, each differently a marionette. I gasped at one point, so strong was the reveal at the film's conclusion.

I can scarcely commend this enough. Screening as part of the shorts programme of the 2022 Taiwan Film Festival in Edinburgh, the overall strand Being Alone Together focuses on self and community, person and place. Yun-sian Huang and Yi-Chin Tsai were likely to find favour with me for depicting the same train in two different ways, but that's one of dozens of moments and details that make this a treat to watch. There are moments where the score resembles pinball, wizardry and distortion part of various twists.

As a series of linked vignettes, the film demonstrates an absolute mastery of the form, floating across the sky and screen. Texture abounds, the delight of the realness of this form of falsity. The smear of household emulsion across a surface is also the polish of concrete. At the market the fish head draws the attention of the birds, its glare a shadow beneath the brim of the hat. Behind it the sea, a sense of it, a bustle of crowd where every background actor is hours of effort, extra labour. These unseen workings abound, smoke and ash and lanterns lit and everywhere the spark of creativity.

Huang and Tsai's second film, following Bart (2016) and preceding Little Hilly (2020). Given their medium is stop motion and how ably both women use it, those timescales are cause for celebration rather than impatience. The flow of it all, water, albumen, oil, grease, damp newspaper and magic all is haunting. Even as traffic flies past our protagonist, the film shares his deliberate pace. No stone unintentional, no moment unmade. For all the visible effort the sonic landscape also transports. Lilting as the camera is tilting, soaring with the striped plastic bag into the sky, the brassy ring of condensation trails against the lens-starred sun. Alexander Wu's music, the traditional music by Chian Chien-Hsing, and David Chen's foley work and sound design all support the tale as surely as the armatures concelaed beneath false flesh and fine fabrics.

Not only magical, but mythical, the chance to see behind the curtain during the credits is icing on the cake. "Where Am I Going?" is best answered with "To watch it if one can".