The Pain of Companionship: Friendship and Intimacy in the Films of Tsai Ming-Liang and Jackass

My first year after graduating college was a lonely time—the excitement of receiving degrees and celebrating with friends extinguished immediately upon moving back home and starting a 9-5 office job. I went from living within walking distance of everyone I knew to Saturday nights spent with my dad watching van life videos on YouTube. With my significant other thousands of miles away and my friends scattered across the country, I looked to lengthy FaceTime calls and late-night movie watching for solace. I found, as many depressed cinephiles have most likely realized before me, that no quantity of films can satiate heartache or loneliness. Or so I thought, until I began an unlikely marathon of contemplative slow-cinema interrupted by bouts of debaucherous slap-stick—finding emotional catharsis and cohesion in their images. More specifically, I discovered what it was like to marathon Tsai Ming-Liang’s filmography alongside the Jackass film franchise and it changed the experience of movie-watching for me, forever.

For the uninitiated, Tsai Ming-Liang is a Taiwanese filmmaker whose brand of slow-moving, rain-soaked cinema about longing and urban malaise in Taipei have drawn festival raves since the early ‘90s. Critics often gush about the interlocking nature of these films, how nearly all of them feature a character named Hsiao-kang (played by actor Lee Kang-sheng) who, depending on the film, either orbits the world of the narrative or is at the center of it. These films are generally characterized by Tsai’s unhurried philosophy to filmmaking; often he will be content to let a single shot linger for minutes at a time, the (incredible) compositions assimilating the viewer into his cinematic worldview. 

The Jackass films, on the other hand, assimilate the viewer into their worldview by showing images like a dude’s penis covered in live bees. This series of films about men hitting each other in the balls ad-infinitum has continued for so many years that the latest entry from the past year, Jackass Forever, introduces its performers as middle-aged, elder statesmen of the nut shot. Accordingly, I found solace in the dual images of these “auteur” works, one informing the other as I sat alone in my childhood bedroom, silently weeping at the emotional journeys of Hsiao-kang and Tsai’s other protagonists, or trying not to wake my parents by laughing too hard at the sight of Steve-O being launched into the air inside a porta-potty.

On a very surface level, the effect of watching Tsai’s films in order from 1992 to 2020 is very much like watching the Jackass films sequentially: you see Hsiao-kang grow up from petulant teenager in Rebels of the Neon God to the subdued, introspective middle-aged man seen last in Days, similar to the experience of watching Johnny Knoxville evolve from recklessly taunting a bull in the first Jackass to seeing him tap out immediately after getting hit by an angry steer in Jackass Forever. The passage of time is tangible and unavoidable across these films; it’s as emotionally affecting watching Hsiao-kang’s family get older and drift apart across the triptych of Rebels, The River and What Time is it There Anyway? as it is to see this group of friends relate to each other and have fun together despite the onslaught of age, drug-addiction, and death that has ensued across the Jackass movies.

However, these films share more in common than just a Linklater-esque commitment to showcasing their actors aging from the 1990s/2000s to the present-day. Both Tsai Ming-liang and the Jackass crew are preoccupied with companionship and intimacy in ways that are visually immersive and emotionally visceral. Consider Tsai’s second film, 1994’s Vive L’amour, in which Hsiao-kang spends his post-work hours sneaking into a vacant apartment for rent, which he uses to spy on the realtor and her lover who occasionally utilize the premises for their affair. Over the course of the film, Hsiao-Kang repeatedly puts himself in physically and emotionally compromising positions in order to maintain proximity to people in order to feel a vague approximation of human intimacy. You can see this behavior in the men of Jackass, too, whose friendships depend entirely on their willingness to put themselves through painful and degrading experiences for the sake of togetherness. 

In the world of Jackass, friendship has a catch: companionship is predicated entirely on how much pain you are willing to take. These films visually literalize the intimacy Tsai’s characters yearn for as well as the toll that seeking it out has taken on them. In both of these cinematic worldviews, someone will be irrevocably changed by the film’s conclusion; in the world of Tsai this usually takes the form of a traumatic emotional moment the protagonist must now contend with, while the consequences to Jackass shenanigans tend to be brain damage or a ruptured testicle (Danger Ehren really took a beating in the latest film). 

Additionally, the Jackass crew’s casual attitude toward male nudity and sometimes homoerotic undertones make for an interesting combined viewing experience with Tsai’s films, in which sexuality is largely fluid and characters bounce around finding physical/emotional intimacy in unlikely scenarios. For the reader unfamiliar with these cinematic works, I would suggest doing what I did and watching Tsai’s The River back-to-back with Jackass 2 for a veritable symphony of nude male bodies, questionable intimacy, and bizarre sustained injuries. Be warned though: any other cinematic double-feature may pale in comparison afterwards.

Few filmmakers showcase the brutality that comes with maintaining companionship and intimacy in adulthood like Tsai Ming-liang and Director Jeff Tremaine of the Jackass franchise do, whether it be through a five-and-a-half minute long shot of actress Yang Kuei-mei crying by herself in a public park, or Danger Ehren quaking with fear right before a speeding lamborghini pulls a tooth out of his gums. The unflinching nature of these shots dares the viewer to look away due to their extremity (either emotional or physical), but anyone familiar with the difficulty of keeping friends/loved ones close as time marches on and people continue to change (both emotionally and geographically) will understand the lengths these individuals take in order to continue feeling needed and desired.

Though few people will experience the exact circumstances that led me, night after night, to search for Tsai’s films on the Internet Archive and immediately afterwards pivot to the antics of Bam, Pontius, Johnny and co., anyone can relate to that desire to hold onto friendship in the face of the inevitable onslaught of time, or the joy of companionship, however fleeting, or the pain of losing someone close to you. On the surface these films seem like they would have little thematic overlap but, for my money, they feature some of the most tender cinematic moments I can recall. 

For those of you reading this who I’ve somehow convinced to join me in this endeavor—let me remind you that the insane stunts and emotional yearning you’re about to view have been performed by professionals and under no circumstances should you try to replicate anything you see at home. (*Cue Jackass theme song*)