Country: China
Director: Jia Zhangke
Time: 1 hour and 48 minutes
What It Elicits: Upended topographies, marital relationships, encounters with change
Where Can I Get It: Unfortunately, only DVD. See below for other Jia Zhangke films available online.
China’s transition (economic, social, environmental) since Deng Xiaoping began opening China’s economy through his “Four Modernizations” (agriculture, industry, defense, science) and “Reform and Opening-up” programs in the late 1970s hardly remains a secret. Yet, the picture of China as technological and economic behemoth borne aloft endless rural-to-urban labor migration, planned mega-projects, and an aggressive class of upwardly-mobile managers and entrepreneurs can obscure the social costs accompanying this (or any) transformation. Still Life, directed by the brilliant Jia Zhangke, examines the dislocations, inequities, and disfigurations inherent in a system upended. Set besides the Three Gorges Dam construction project in a city slated to be flooded (“de-constructed”), the film focuses on two returning characters, unknown to one another, each looking for a spouse who has been caught up in the now-disappearing town’s transformation.
At base, Still Life remains a character study and not a social critique—though its setting and the concomitant effects of the topographical transformation under way certainly present a central metaphor around which to read the film. The film’s two protagonists, Han, a coal-miner returning from Shanxi looking for the wife he left behind, and Shen Hong, a nurse looking for a philandering husband who left her, each enter the city as outsiders seeking those caught within the upheaval. It would perhaps be easy to read the film as an analysis of the fraying of social (or familial) ties inherent in an economy unleashed, but this simplifies the complexities of the characters and their relationships. Transformation per se does not come under sustained critique, it merely exists, to be dealt with and understood, to be navigated, and to be worked within. Shot on digital video, familiar to American audiences through the work of Michael Mann, a certain verisimilitude creeps into the film, combining with understated acting, wide shots, and limited dialogue to offer a documentary-esque quality. A film without heroes, the central characters explore the constraints of life without challenging them. Indeed, the film reminds this viewer of much earlier neo-realist cinema in the vein of De Sica or, more recently, the Dardenne brothers’ explorations of post-industrial Belgium. An intricate piece of filmmaking, navigating an intricate set of relationships, Still Life remains worth watching for those interested in China or simply interested in the folly and depth of humanity.
An apology: I wrote this up, had it all ready to be automatically sent, and then it turns out Still Life is no longer available online! Since there’s no fun in reading about a film you can’t watch, please accept my apologies and trust all subsequent films will be accessible through the internet in some form or another. Below, I have linked to some great Jia Zhangke films now available.
Go Down the Jia Zhangke Rabbit Hole With:
The World (2004) available at Criterion
Unknown Pleasures (2002) available at Criterion
I Wish I Knew (2010) available to rent ($3.99) on Amazon