(the description of the mood of the movie may be considered as a spoiler - because there is not much action in fact)<br /><br />Great one...<br /><br />Is it for my peculiar interest for the dystopias and utopias? Is it for the atmosphere of the movie. Or is there some more magic? If yes, it is for sure the utmost human one...<br /><br />This film is, no doubt, extremely artistic/artificial (depends on taste). I can imagine most of the people who hate to watch slow movies (and those of Tsai Ming Liang (who I didn't enjoy other times) are one of the slowest that I know), suffering during the movie. Yes, people are unable to slow down and to let time pass - and to watch it without feeling they waste it. One can take this piece as torture or as a therapy...<br /><br />The topic at the surface? The lack of communication - even if we live in rabbit cages - one next to each other - but not really together? People are tired, sick of something and unable to describe it - just don't want to meet, touch, talk, confront the others... like if they had disappeared. The big block of flats looks void and the rain falling constantly evokes the strange melancholy inside. And sometimes it must be something abnormal, unexpected, some unwanted decay as a hole in the floor of concrete - that allows us to reach each other.<br /><br />One of the possible ways to look at it is this: Don't survey the inner world of the characters - consider the whole movie-space to be inside of yourself. And ask - why is it there? Where could these depressive states and moods come form? Is there a place for them, they don't have a right to be here? And search for the answers (if you need them) among the walls and halls of the block - instead of inside hardly transparent mind of a man.<br /><br />The key to understand is not-to-understand - to let a movie borrow us - as a subject of study - inside itself - and at the end safely return us to our more colorful and "normal" looking reality.<br /><br />Then, maybe, you will reach - like me - the feeling of real, possible, non-pathetic hope, that in core we are still humans... and this state of mind can help one much to live in this world.