Word: fishly
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...terrorism will take the U.S.-led coalition to some far-flung frontiers, but probably none more desolate than the southern shores of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan. Once a balmy oasis of apricot groves, fields of watermelon and rivers of fish so fat that each could feed a family, this is now a poisoned desert of salt and brown dust. The catalog of catastrophes that makes up one of the world's worst environmental disasters includes mankind's largest current tuberculosis epidemic and highest rates of anemia, the biggest dust bowl on earth and one of the most extreme ranges...
...failed. Without the sea, temperatures became erratic. What water remained was a concentrated cocktail of salt, minerals and pesticide runoff from the cotton fields upstream. Moynaq, the nearest town, watched its livelihood drain away with the parting Aral. The former bustling port used to can 70 million tins of fish a year and import millions of tons of grain and coal. Now Moynaq's fleet lies beached in the desert just outside town, 100 km from the shore, its masts rusted sentinels in a fog of dust. The town is desiccated and almost deserted. The 2,000 people who remain...
...Every scene bulges at the celluloid seams with suggestive possibility. Each is a geometric poem of spatial awareness, the juxtaposition of animate and inanimate. As mother and son sit down for dinner, half of their fish tank fills the bottom right of the screen, and a ghostly white fish swims in and out of the frame. As Hsaio-kang watches Truffaut, the TV set is, again, placed at bottom right. Chen and Cecilia Yip's heads line up diagonally on a pillow before they kiss. Even the chairs in Paris' Luxembourg Gardens have armrests that rise at 45 degrees from...
...chyi), buys a dual-time watch from him before she leaves for Paris. Hsiao-kang is disturbed that his mother (Lu Yi-ching) has responded to her husband's death by praying for his return, leaving food out for him just in case. She concludes that a large white fish in their aquarium is his reincarnation. Hsiao-kang retreats into fantasies about his fleeting meeting with Shiang-chyi and, hoping somehow to connect with her, sets all his watches to Paris time. He also starts drinking red wine and watching FranCois Truffaut films. Meanwhile, Shiang-chyi, hanging out in Paris...
...final seven minutes are master-class. In the Luxembourg Gardens, Shiang-chyi's face fills the screen, as ghostly as that fish. A string of snot runs from her nose; there's a tear smear or two on her cheeks. The camera retreats, showing children playing to her left, interrupted when a suitcase on wheels is dragged between them by two adults. Then we're looking behind her sleeping head, at a pond: the suitcase drifts, unexplained, from left to right and out of shot. Back again, and now the frame is filled by a Chinese man who fishes...