What a waste of my time!!!

I really don't get the hype.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

I saw the rating here, so I watched the movie. Well, I don't understand the rating. I read some reviews here, I still don't understand. Of course, some scenes are very well shot, acting is good and so on. But a story with no development, (almost) no dialogues, no surprises just can't be a good story. And movie without a (good) story can't be a good movie. To watch a boring life on screen is even more boring than living a boring life.So it's just boring and weird... despite the interesting idea, good acting and directing. Which is sad, since the movie had huge potential!But I can imagine there are quite some people out, who like this movie... But you need a really special taste.

I don't want to put too much thought into this review, lest I return to the agonizing state of disrepair I was in upon leaving this "film." I will be brief: This IS the worst film I have ever seen. Were I not in a class, I would have walked out or turned it off. I NEVER do that and I seldom even consider it. Can I file a grievance against my professor?To those who think it's "realistic": What planet do you live on? I have never seen "real" people speak and do so little. Ozu is realistic. Rossellini is realistic. They are engaging in part because they understand that real does not mean boring.Also, in spite of the two hour running time, and the wealth of meaning that has been projected onto this film by reviewers, NOTHING happens. If nothing happens, then there can be no meaning other than "nothing happens," in which case the next logical thought would be "life is pointless." If this is the case, put down the camera and kill yourself.Anything this film tries to say about modern life, family, or existential ennui could have been said in a few moments of engaging film. Instead the filmmaker is content to force you to watch as he leaves the camera running. Honestly, this film offers nothing. The characters are flat. They may as well have been called man, boy and woman. They are two-dimensional. To those who like this movie, what do you know about these people? How can we understand their actions if we know virtually nothing about them? Maybe they're supposed to be universal, but I doubt it. Were this the case, then every father is at least somewhat homosexual, every mother is unfaithful and suffocating and every child is a helpless moron. The performances (as well as the film itself) made me think to myself, "I think these people think they are making a great movie." If the themes that previous reviewers have attributed to this movie appeal to you, then try some of the following movies and filmmakers. You might find that you don't have to suffer through ridiculously long takes, flat acting, and unnecessary boredom.Taxi Driver, The Mosquito Coast, anything by Michaelangelo Antonioni or Ingmar Bergman, The Ice Storm, Talk Radio, Ohayo!, Videodrome, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some others. You could also read books by Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman.

There are many who say Marcel Duchamp was the greatest influence in 20th century art, but for better or worse is hotly debated. One can put a commode on a dais in an art gallery and there will be those wearing berets and smoking French cigarettes who will examine it closely as they discuss in hushed and reverent tones the significance of the fact that anyone seated on it would be facing north, or whatever point of the compass a user would happen to be facing. Then there would be others, among whom I would be one, who would look at it and say, "OK. It's a toilet. So what?"Whether you considers Ming-liang Tsai's "The River" a work of cinematic genius exploring the soulessness of modern existence in an urban landscape (see most of the previous comments), or an uncommonly tedious exercise in pointing out the obvious by a self-indulgent director (yes, that's my opinion) is obviously a matter of taste. Personally, I don't need to pay money and walk into a theater to sit through two hours of some Asiatic form of Dogme 95 film-making to know that spiritual ennui is the price extracted for living in today's industrialized world. I can get on the subway where I live and see it all around me, also in real time, and with much better lighting.With very little dialogue, "The River" relies almost exclusively on cinematic technique, often involving images in reflective surfaces to indicate (insert metaphorical reference of your choice here). The film does have the virtue of being made up of extremely well-composed shots, and if viewed strictly from a photographic standpoint, it does have some artistic merit. But on the whole, I find little to recommend this film. There are far better movies out there to be seen. Rating: 3/10.

Xiao-kang (Kang-sheng Lee) is a teenage rube who gets hornswoggled into doing the dead man's float in a polluted river so a no-budget filmmaker can get her shot. The next day, a pain in his neck appears, and his father (Tien Miao) has every solution for it except the obvious one--a doctor. The curious web that connects Xiao-kang, whose pain grows from the noisome to the suicide-inducing, his dad, a divorcee with a penchant for male hustlers, and the kid's proper, upscale girlfriend (Shiang-chyi Chen), couldn't be guessed at by any movie you've ever seen or any novel you've ever read. And if the words "David Cronenberg" popped into your mind when Xiao-kang's neck started metastasizing, you're wrong again.The writer-director Tsai Ming-liang has two primary interests in THE RIVER: water and alienated architecture. If you wanted to be really crude about it, you could say that on today's world-cinema landscape Wong Kar-Wai is a new Godard, and Tsai Ming-liang is a new Antonioni. He knows how to make a colloquy of old Taiwanese men at McDonald's look like Heywood Floyd's walk through the space station in 2001; and for a better picture of bottom-drawer loneliness you'd have to go back to Travis Bickle. But he has two secondary interests, too--bodies (Dad's pot-bellied but still lithe one, the son's with his ever-tilting neck) and organic human processes (peeing, washing, masturbating, frying stuff in a wok). The emphasis on forlorn public spaces justified the movie's presence in an absurdly titled recent L.A. retrospective called "Ultra Modern Loneliness," but if you think Ming-liang is an alienated King of Pain, you're still wide of the mark. He uses these quintessentially bodily moments to make hyperpoetic still lifes that evoke the paintings of Eric Fischl. Every scene is like a metaphor that doesn't point at anything but itself.If you had to characterize Tsai Ming-liang's voice here, it would be like the sound of passing traffic heard from an apartment window. He so withdraws from the indicating and commentary that passes as ninety-nine percent of world moviemaking that the audience gets freaky nervous. But as much as any director that's emerged since David Lynch, he's a true-blue original--he don't owe nothing to nobody. Perhaps the most gorgeous aspect of THE RIVER is Ming-liang's focus on the cinematic potential of human touch, which fascinates him even more profoundly than it did Cassavetes or Pialat. The way a human touch can shade from pain-giving to pleasure, or vice versa, leads to the shattering climax of THE RIVER's seeming non-story--a narrative arc as unfettered, as personal and intuitive, as any in contemporary movies.