Still Life (2006/2008) ****
What a lonely place the world is for so many. As we lurch forward in the name of modernity we always seem ironically becoming more and more isolated as the world around us gets smaller and smaller.
This conflict lies at the heart of Zhang Ki Jia's haunting film Still Life. Although the film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2006 and received widespread praise, it only finally received a very limited theatrical run in North America this year.
The film revolves around two stories shot and set in the Fengjie area as it is being demolished and flooded for the Three Gorges Damn (that area is now totally underwater). One involves a man looking for his wife, who left him with their daughter 16 years ago. He's worked in the mines since then, and upon arriving home does not realize that the valley has been flooded. He searches around until he finds her brother. He informs him that she works upriver on a boat now. He can't see her until her boat arrives there. In the mean time, he makes friends with a young man called Mark, who bases his personality around the roles of Chow Yun Fat. The two work demolishing old ruins by hand with sledgehammers, while waiting for the estranged wife to return to town. The second story follows a nurse who comes to the area looking for her husband, who she has not heard from in two years. She enlists the help of one of his friends to help find him. She suspects rightly that her husband is having an affair. She discovers he is now quite successful, and having an affair with his female investor. When she finally gets to see him, she walks away. When he follows she tells him she is in love with someone else and wants a divorce. Is she really? Does she really? We can suspect, but humans are funny creatures.
These stories are only marginally interconnected. There are threads that connect them, but only randomly. The two are even on the same boat and witness the same strange event but are totally unaware of each other.
The strange event that the two witness is only one of a few that I would dare not reveal. They seem so strangely surreal in what appears to be such a grounded film. They're perplexing, but I think serve to highlight our tiny existence in an infinite world.
Jia films with a patient eye, allowing the camera to move slowly and linger on its inhabitants. It's a gorgeous looking movie, special for capturing a 2000 year old landscape in its death throws. There will never be another film like it, because those places no longer exist. That valley is the real star of the film. It's a haunting and otherworldly place where, despite the heat, the sun never shines.
Despite the film's focus on the destruction of time and place and our collective loneliness in the modern world, it's also a testament to the depth and capacity of the human spirit to triumph. Yes we are but small blimps on the world's radar, a world that isolates and alienates us, but we cope and strive. How? In the connections that bond us as humans. The physical world around us may be washed away, but the friendships and connections we make - no matter how small - remind us that it is often the smallest joys in life that mean the most. And with that, we persevere.
What a lonely place the world is for so many. As we lurch forward in the name of modernity we always seem ironically becoming more and more isolated as the world around us gets smaller and smaller.
This conflict lies at the heart of Zhang Ki Jia's haunting film Still Life. Although the film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2006 and received widespread praise, it only finally received a very limited theatrical run in North America this year.
The film revolves around two stories shot and set in the Fengjie area as it is being demolished and flooded for the Three Gorges Damn (that area is now totally underwater). One involves a man looking for his wife, who left him with their daughter 16 years ago. He's worked in the mines since then, and upon arriving home does not realize that the valley has been flooded. He searches around until he finds her brother. He informs him that she works upriver on a boat now. He can't see her until her boat arrives there. In the mean time, he makes friends with a young man called Mark, who bases his personality around the roles of Chow Yun Fat. The two work demolishing old ruins by hand with sledgehammers, while waiting for the estranged wife to return to town. The second story follows a nurse who comes to the area looking for her husband, who she has not heard from in two years. She enlists the help of one of his friends to help find him. She suspects rightly that her husband is having an affair. She discovers he is now quite successful, and having an affair with his female investor. When she finally gets to see him, she walks away. When he follows she tells him she is in love with someone else and wants a divorce. Is she really? Does she really? We can suspect, but humans are funny creatures.
These stories are only marginally interconnected. There are threads that connect them, but only randomly. The two are even on the same boat and witness the same strange event but are totally unaware of each other.
The strange event that the two witness is only one of a few that I would dare not reveal. They seem so strangely surreal in what appears to be such a grounded film. They're perplexing, but I think serve to highlight our tiny existence in an infinite world.
Jia films with a patient eye, allowing the camera to move slowly and linger on its inhabitants. It's a gorgeous looking movie, special for capturing a 2000 year old landscape in its death throws. There will never be another film like it, because those places no longer exist. That valley is the real star of the film. It's a haunting and otherworldly place where, despite the heat, the sun never shines.
Despite the film's focus on the destruction of time and place and our collective loneliness in the modern world, it's also a testament to the depth and capacity of the human spirit to triumph. Yes we are but small blimps on the world's radar, a world that isolates and alienates us, but we cope and strive. How? In the connections that bond us as humans. The physical world around us may be washed away, but the friendships and connections we make - no matter how small - remind us that it is often the smallest joys in life that mean the most. And with that, we persevere.