Stray Dogs (2013) User Reviews

A painfully slow and beautiful film

[willwoodmill · 8/10 · 10 May 2016]

The modern film world is one filled with excess, and I'm not just talking about manufactured Hollywood block-busters. No there is even a large amount of excess in films that are more "artistic" if you will. And I want to be clear, that is not necessarily a bad thing, several films recent films have done wonders with just the concept of excess beyond reason, like The Wolf of Wall Street for example. But I do feel like something has been lost in the film world, a certain subtly that filled the films of Bergman and Ozu. A restraint that served to exemplify the characters and their struggles. Luckily there are some contemporary directors that are trying to continue this subtlety, and one of those directors is Ming-Liang Tsai.

Stray Dogs is the most recent film by Ming-Liang Tsai, and well Stray Dogs doesn't have a plot, at least not the conventional sense. The film instead follows the lives of a few different characters, and tries to capture them as they are. The film brings the audience close to these characters and let's the audience understand them for what they are. To say that Stray Dogs takes its time is an understatement, every single scene in the film is slow and is stretched to the very limit of filmmaking. And believe me when I say that the scenes are at their limits. There are two scenes in the film that go on for so long that it exceeded not only anything else I had seen in any film, but they exceeded anything I thought possible. There is something very hypnotic about these scenes, Ming-Liang Tsai forces the audience to just stare at these characters for minutes on end as we soak in their facial expressions and slowly become one with them. It is something that is truly gorgeous and needs to be seen to be understood.

If the actors in Stray Dogs were bad or even just average the film would be completely unwatchable, but luckily for us they are all fantastic. Especially Kang-sheng Lee, who plays the father of a small homeless family. (Kang-sheng Lee worked with Ming Liang-Tsai on several of his films.) He gives one of the most enduring and real performances I have ever seen. Another thing that's needs to be great for the film to work is the cinematography, which is also fantastic. The film is shot in a very matter-of-fact way, things are just shown as they are. The camera only a moves a handful amount of times in a film that's over two hours long. And the colors and lighting are just wonderful. Overall Stray Dogs is one of the most refreshing films I've seen in a long time, and if you think you can handle a really, really slow paced film, with a very unconventional narrative structure. I would highly recommend Stray Dogs.

8.6

The anguish of living on the fringe.

[Sergeant_Tibbs · 7/10 · 27 February 2015]

My first Tsai Ming Liang film was his fifty minute odyssey of a monk moving very slowly through Journey To The West. I unexpectedly loved it, so I was ready for any challenges he had for me in his second film of the year Stray Dogs. Yes, it has an abundance of slowly paced and ethereal shots, but here he had a loose narrative. It's all about the anguish of living on the fringe and the film perfectly evokes that emotion as characters silently battle the elements. There's not a shot quite like the scene where its lead sings tearfully while holding up a sign. However, the film lacks an essential economy to make it worth all its 138 minutes, even if it is beautifully shot for the most part. It needed more time in the editing room, and more time in the writers room at that. There's not enough layers to the characters and story to make it completely satisfying, besides potential political meanings that flew over my head. Its best when its eliciting a devastating trapped sensation with an eternal cycle offering no escape.

7/10

Waste of a possible good story

[suvra-2007 · 6/10 · 18 November 2013]

Being a student of film, heard a lot about Tsai ming Liyang in my institute. Actually heard many good reviews about his other film 'The Whole'. Then I went to see the movie 'Stray Dogs' at the Kolkata International Film Festival 2013. And believe me, it gave me pain.

Now if you consider the last sentence of the above paragraph as a positive one, then you would be wrong. The story of a deceased family, who find it difficult to manage their daily living food is said in such a way, at a point it seemed boring.There are obviously master touch in showing the feeling of the father.specially with the cabbage sequence, it seemed as a melancholic poetry.

But then, what happened to the family, were they in distress from the very beginning, is not very clear. Mainly the background of the characters is the thing that lacks in the film.That's why the credibility of the characters comes to question sometimes.

And then comes the length of the shots.Wallah....Had this film been shot in 35 mm film, I don't know whether this structure of film could have been achieved or not. Only because someone has the benefit of digital film making, that doesn't give anyone the liberty to test the patience of the audience I reckon.

(Spoiler) I don't know whether it would be a spoiler or not, but I have to say, the last two shots of the films are so long, that it seemed at a point, that this film is never ending. Even with this structure, this film could have been 25-30 minutes shorter.

At the end I can only say, a very good prospect and possibility of telling a good story has been lost, with some rare touchy treatments..

It is a movie that can be called art

[flora_li_2000 · 9/10 · 26 November 2015]

Most of the time when we go to see a movie, what we look for is to be entertained. So by definition those movies are entertainment. The people who make those movies, even though they call themselves artists, are actually entertainers. We look for self recognition, relaxation, amusement,... Yes, entertainment. We are used to being fed plots and emotion quickly. But some movies are actually art, and the movie makers, are truly artists. They do not entertain, they educate. They do not entertain, they inspire. They do not entertain, they lead. This is one of those movies, it is basically about desperate poor and unimportant people's life under microscope. Not an unusual story but It is told in a very distinctive and unconventional way. The director once said, why does a movie have to to have a story with beginning, peak and ending? Why does a scene have to have something happen? Weird, right? Yet if we open ourselves to the possibility that there is not a fixed way to make a movie, we may be returned to the original stage of our senses, while we were much softer and sensitive as we Do not have a box in our head. There are A lot of long takes. Some I like, some I do not, the funny thing is, when I am determined to be open and not anxiously waiting for some big movement in the scene, I find those long takes sometimes not long enough. Because I now feel the emotion of the character and my emotion flows with the scene, but the take cut short before I can switch. This is really a brand new experience. I won't talk about the splendid performance and the black humor in the move, if you are patient and open you will find them yourselves, as long as you are the kind of audience who enjoy art, in addition to entertainment.

Wow!

[ricardopthomaz · 9/10 · 1 December 2013]

This is a reflexive movie. Probably, it's not for everyone out there. It's one of the most slow paced movies I've ever seen. There are scenes that have a load of anguish and desperation that I never experienced in any other movie recently. This movie makes you stop for a moment and meditate about your very everyday life. The only "friendly" scene in the entire movie is when the kids start to pick up names for the piece of cabbage they have. There are scenes that seemed to take forever and you're invited to come along and enjoy the dark tranquility. Paradoxically, it causes you a feeling of discomfort because we don't really know if we are really relaxed with everything. Sometimes, silence and tranquility can be deceiving.

This movie came to remind us about our loss of serenity in our very everyday lives. It tests you to the point of you feeling uncomfortable before the long, looong, loooooooooong takes. It's not only just a movie, it's a deep experience within our own selves, our sanity, our capacity of taking a seat, stop for a moment and look beyond the environment that surrounds us, for us to enjoy the little simpler things, to ignore the noise, the problems and everything, stop going so fast and face the view, the silence and face our own existence, our moments, to make our peace with our own time again.

And I really hope that I can do this again at some moment in my life. Because life is going in such a hurry and such a speed that we kinda lost track of ourselves. So it was a worthy and rewarding experience. Once again, and this time at last, because it was the last movie, I thank the SESC's "37º Festival International de Cinema de São Paulo" event for an appropriate and decent closure and for another great film.

Tsai's best film?

[ReadingFilm · 19 December 2022]

Watching his films in order, they were always building to fulfill a vision and it is questionable if he achieved it, but here he broke the dam down. How to quantify this notion of the breakthrough? It is hard to say.

It is achieving deeper ends of surrealism than ever before, but not pushing it on us like the others. The others are really racing to impress us, work for us, as auteur works, clever puzzles.

This one is existing in its own orbit. So if I discuss the notion of a breakthrough it is that he finally erased the director Tsai from his film and let it exist on its own without the artist winking at us. That can't be understated in the arts which, and his body of work specifically, has always been about him. He even had a line of merch.

Something about the chilling emptiness of the slow cinema does something to our bodies, our minds. Here I feel he truly let the baby be born, and let it exist, and came into his own as an artist director.

It is a film that must be earned, through understanding Tsai, through understanding slow film and what it is reacting against in the traditional forms, it is not one that can be viewed through ignorance. It is making connections, moods, feelings, the canvas isn't the film on screen, but is our consciousness. All slow cinema operates in the same way, but to different ends. Here is the same actors and actresses as his other films, but they do not feel like the 10th film of them, it feels like they all got together for the first time. The transience of it all, creates a pure cinema and points to new frontiers.

Space and whatever

[Chiwanku · 10/10 · 4 July 2019]

Now let me start of on a clichéd note here, that I myself don't see myself as the kind of person to write reviews on this site, be it overly self and art and political drivel indulged paragaraphes about the essence of a a picture or what have you as the state of these reviews on this site, who might even scare off potential interest in a film like this, talking about artificial things like editing minutes out of the film (this is an attack at them) and the such. So I'm gonna make it short -

• let me just comment on one scene and one scene only, otherwise it might get too long and in the end I might get criticised for what the film gets criticised for on this very page.

It's right before the end, where the shop clerk, the mother figure lies in bed with the daughter figure, the little girl who's face we see in contrast to the woman's face, covering her face beneath her black plump hair, that at the very first shot of the film, sitting next to the two children, not her children as it seems, sleeping, the cracking walls behind her, sitting, she sits with her legs sprawling in the sense of reaching out of her dress, while covering her face, showing her feminine legs, seeming or making herself seem like a much younger person, as a clean clean ghost of a beauty, her face is shown at the end of the title sequence, beginning the story with the father, his often mentioned alcoholism and his smell, his face, we see the man pee, spitting out cabbage leaves, who had a face, he's eating junk food on the corner of the street at night, so when the two, let's not forget, that we see the little girl in her room and learning how to wash her hands and building up the cabbage woman, that she wants to keep next to her in her bed, the boy, her brother, standing at the pissoir, talking to his father at night, saying that he needs to pee, the father takes him out to pee, smoking next to him and as were seeing those children, you could say exploited without there being tangible exploit, talking about children, seeing imagines of not-cleanliness next to the dirt of the father, his alcoholism, his smell, we start to sympathise with the clerk, her cleanliness, her constant spraying of the cleanser around her house, scrubbing the bath tub after the man, his smell, her house is full of wrinkles, a burnt house, as the daughter, the little girl, whose face we saw and whose body we saw next to the smell of the father, asking her, about the wrinkles.

And the woman says, that a house is like a person, that it grows old and that it gets sick. At the beginning, boy and girl walk next to a big tree and the girls says what a big tree, those instances, one of two I think where the camera is moving, another one when the children walk across the beach, the father as a figurine, shadow trotting on the beach, is far behind.

This is a great film.

Falls A Bit Short Of Being A Great Film

[fellini_58701 · 5/10 · 7 September 2015]

Tsai Ming-Liangs film Stray Dogs falls a bit short of being a great film but its not a disappointing one either. An existential and slow paced character study of a homeless drunk father and his two children living as the titles says "Stray Dogs". The films story reflects the desperation and misery of being homeless and a supermarket worker who becomes fond of the children and tries to rescue them from there misery. Downfall of the film is the careless editing of the long meandering scenes that seems to wear out there welcome after two minutes. This film could have been a great one if it only ran under two hours or less.

Best film of the decade

[luckeatminow · 10/10 · 19 August 2020]

Masterpiece of art. The film requires a lot of patience, but soon we adapt to its slow pace, ... SPOILERS. The film criticizes the alienation of society and the continuous attempt to find meaning in our Absurd life, whether through art, family or religion. The mural means the film itself, the characters are us who try to find some meaning in something empty

for the dedicated fan of tsai ming-liang only

[ethanoel · 5/10 · 20 January 2015]

tsai ming liang is a director or should you even say an auteur who is really a strange bird in Chinese or in world cinema. this movie continues his same oddball line of work. it is perfectly suited for a highbrow art-house film lover who knows how to appreciate the overly and painfully long scenes completely incomprehensible storytelling and heavy symbolism all of which are mixed together to create an utterly boring movie that lasts more than two hours. the spectators gluteus maximus muscles are put to a tough test to get through the yawning experience...

director's previous works have been as peculiar or even more peculiar as this movie (to say the least - in "he liu" made in 1997 the father and son even end up in the same bed to have sex!) so i strongly recommend them only to a very elitist (western) viewer who wants to have recognition for his/her excellent taste (to get totally bored) and who still thinks postmodernism is a relevant mode to make movies.

it is indeed a real pity because i think the story could have had relevance to tell something important and revealing about taiwanese society but now all the potential substance to make a point is mostly wasted.

Distinctive

[eugehet · 8/10 · 22 July 2015]

I first came across Tsai Ming Liang's film when I was watching the "walking on water" short film, part of the monk walking series. I was blown away because it was showing together with award winning directors short film across Asia. While the rest of the directors was telling stories, Tsai's unique style was distinctive. My impression was "slow" and "long" and didn't quite understand what he was telling through his short. It was not a lousy work but it did left me stumped. I did not know film could be made that way.

2 years later, I heard a lot about "Stray Dogs", his latest feature length movie and watched it last night. Again you can see his unique style of slowness in this film but I began to understand what the director is trying to do. Tsai is making film without the constraint of time. Time cannot be a factor in his film. Although each take is long, I realised that the more crucial that particular scene, the longer he holds the shot. While every scene seems like a separate entity in itself, beautifully shot almost like painting but forms together to structure the story.

I heard that he said this film was actually shot wider than the actual ratio we watched in cinema because he wanted the audience to see the environment around the characters. This brings me to understand why certain takes was so long. For e.g.. the scene where 2 men in ponchos in the rain holding the billboard. The director did not want us to just glance at these men but also the surrounding..how the people were driving passed them and don't even take noticed at all..how even more pathetic they are and perhaps men in this job are marginalised in the society. When all the vehicles drove away you see even more men like them in the background. Not sure if the surroundings are staged or real but I could feel a deep sense of helplessness in them. These are the thoughts that went through my mind while I was watching. if it were to be a 10-20sec scene, I would not have taken this scene seriously.

The story is so simple that there really isn't a plot at all. Instead he used his characters to drive the film. His characters redefine what is acting. They bring realism to their characters that I cannot tell if they are trained actors or people that really lived through that lives. I could tell from some of the long takes that the characters are developing the emotion..they are dictating the pacing and the rhythm. Thus it is not just a long dull shot. If you walked away and come back at the same scene, it feels different already. Which I feel why no prominent music or soundtrack is used in the film is because it might actually affect the pacing of what he envisioned. He let the ambiance of the environment set the mood.

While many felt the film is too long, I felt otherwise because it is precisely there are many long takes meaning lesser clips piecing the film together. I think the director faces the problem of choosing the right moment in each clip instead of choosing the right shot. For eg. the scene where the lead actor eating his lunch. The scene shows he was actually eating halfway already which i thought felt very awkward for me.

Are all the female characters suppose to connect and symbolised something? Or they are playing out different scenario setup by the director in each act? It is not clear and i guess it can be either ways leaving it to open interpretation. My only concern is perhaps the significant of the painting on the wall. It is a beautiful painting though.

Not sure the reason why the director did very little close up shot. Perhaps it is to create a distance between us and the characters. The only ones I remembered were with the lead actor. Every close-up shot done on him was brilliant. The long scene of him holding the billboard and singing probably is a defining moment and made me realised how good his acting is. Probably also the toughest shot for the actor himself. Most of the wide shot made me felt like i'm actually standing at a distance observing the characters much like how I observed people in my daily life. On the side note, this film won the 50th Golden Horse Award Best Director & Best Actor.

We are too used to the conventional storytelling way in movies. Fast pace, fast cut and many things going on at same the time, feeding us directly the stories and emotion. You cannot be conscious of time when watching this film. Instead of telling you the moral of the story, he lets you decides your takeaway. The more acceptive you are to his film, the more you can draw.

In conclusion, I think Tsai does not conform to the filmmaking industry. His approach to filmmaking can be hard to comprehend and many a times illogical and pretty random but it is beginning to stand out and open the doors to more possibilities and perception of what film can do. Having said all that, I'm looking forward to watching his future and past works!

They're called EDITING and PACING!

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 9 April 2015]

As I sat and watched "Stray Dog", I felt very annoyed. Again and again and again, scenes where nothing particular is happening, the camera remained there for a VERY long time. In each case, the film could have been edited and you would have had roughly the same effect...without boring the audience. So, when you show two men in ponchos in the rain holding signs, you don't NEED to show this scene for a full minute and then return to do the same thing again-- especially when the men aren't doing anything other than holding signs!! The same goes for the introduction, as you see a lady staring at her kids as they sleep...for the longest time!! In addition, showing a guy taking a leak is another sign that this is a self-indulgent sort of film from director Ming-liang Tsai. Editing and pacing are important to most directors, but not apparently in this case! As a result, a decent story is marred unnecessarily by the direction that tends to bore and annoy many viewers. I know I sure felt both. What SHOULD have been an important film about a homeless family on the fringes instead is an interminable bore. We get it that the folks are depressed and that's why they do nothing...but think about the audience having to watch this.

Way too short.

[isaac-08223 · 1/10 · 19 September 2020]

This movie could've easily been 3-4 hours but they had to cut it down to 2 hours to make it more appealing to a modern audience.

The fact that they cut the final mural staring scene down to only 17 mins is pathetic. By the time it was over I had to watch it 3 more times!! And the scene where the 2 men were motionlessly sanding there holding the signs was riveting, I'm unbelievably upset they only went back to that exact same shot once in the movie for another few minutes. The movie clearly suffered greatly from the editors cutting the scenes far to short.

Wow. Impressive

[GialloUncharted · 1/10 · 15 July 2017]

Warning: A lot of spoilers. I explain here the whole plot of the movie. Nothing happens. No one talks. 200 minutes.

Great reviews, though. The part about great reviews is what impresses me most about this. 100 out of 100. Masterpiece.

Yeah, sure.

a 5 minute short film simply extended to a 2 hour movie.

[ajstuns · 2/10 · 14 August 2017]

see this movie if u have nothing to see, then u won't want to see any more art films.waste of time.2 hours, no dialogues, no script.pathetic movie.the good thing about the movie are it's cinematography and costume design.if it made as a short film it would be far better than this thing.

Interminable

[juantheroux · 4/10 · 29 October 2021]

A motion picture redefined as a slow montage of still photos and/or slides. The camera stays fixated on people doing nothing much, like eating chicken. Other than a documentary-like expose of a homeless family in Taipei, the film accomplishes little.

like watching paint dry

[dharmathug · 2/10 · 9 May 2020]

Like watching paint dry, in the rain.

no reason to make, no reason to watch.

even if you speed up the movie it's still interminable.

Inconsistencies/errors

[dreams_to_print · 3/10 · 9 March 2020]

The father gets paid 600 RMB, not NT. Some characters on signs are simplified, not a Taiwan practice. The cabbage is absolutely still pristine after the few days that the film supposedly takes place.

Still, the license plates are Taiwan's.

If you like staring at things, you're in luck

[andrewpoe · 4/10 · 16 April 2024]

I'm conflicted about this movie. Some of it is incredibly well shot and setup perfectly. Other times, it's as much of a statement as it is test of an audience's patience, will, and perseverance.

The story told is one told through what we see on the screen. There's also the story untold or not shown. The story we see is about homelessness - the man and his two kids are expected to survive in a world without a safety net. The woman they meet helps them and provides a stable life. One of the shots that stuck with me is the guy singing a song to the point he's in tears. There's also the infamous "cabbage scene" and the two final scenes near the end where both the man and woman stare at something off-screen.

The story untold is how the man got the job holding a sign in the first place. How bad does the job market have to be where that is the only job for him. Does he lack discernible skills or abilities to be able to work a higher salary? Or does have the skills/abilities but he goes in for interviews and the companies pretty up the reason for not hiring? "We're sorry Mr. _____ but you are not what we are looking for at this time. Thank you for your interest." Then after he leaves the room, "Thank God that's over. That guy smells like &#@! And hasn't showered in months." The apartment complex that hired him doesn't care. "I don't give a &#@! If you are a &#@! Doctor and a &#@! Heart transplant came in! I want you to hold this sign until the end of your shift! Then I might pay you if you actually drum up business!"

When making this film, I wonder how much Tsai Ming-liang knew he would have varied reactions - some people think this is a masterpiece of cinema and some people think this is taking the piss out of arthouse cinema. At times, while watching it, I wondered if both reactions could be true at the same time. I almost wonder if the director was laughing to himself when he went about this. "I'm going to have scenes of people pissing, &#@!ing, eating, have a guy cry in anguish over a head of cabbage, and have two people stare at a wall for closing to 20 minutes."

In some ways, the closest comparison I can make is to Bela Tarr, another director with long movies and long shots. Both Ming-liang and Tarr talk about the desperation and loneliness of the modern world, but in different ways.

This is something else as a movie.