Still Life
Written by Jia Zhangke, Sun Jiamin and Guan Na
Directed by Jia Zhangke
New Yorker Films
2008
Rating:


Chinese director Jia Zhangke has slowly opened up his canvas over the course of his filmmaking career, moving from the claustrophobic villages of "Xiao Wu (Pickpocket)," "Platform" and "Unknown Pleasures" to the symbolically fused amusement park of "The World." "Still Life" is Jia's most expansive film to date in regards to setting, taking place in the Yangtze River town of Fengjie that, after 2000 years of existence, is being demolished and flooded as part of the Chinese government's mammoth Three Gorges Dam project.

The Three Gorges Dam has displaced more than one million people. "Still Life" (titled "The Good People of Three Gorges" in Mandarin) concerns two of them.

Mineworker Sanming (frequent Jia actor Han Sanming) arrives in Fengjie from Shanxi in search of the wife and child who left him 16 years ago. His quest hits an immediate hurdle when he learns the address he's looking for has already been claimed by the Yangtze. Meanwhile, nurse Shen Hong (Zhao Tao) searches for her husband so she can file for a divorce. Tellingly, Sanming and Hong are only explicitly connected by an archaeologist, Wang Donming (Wang Hongwei).

Sanming, Shen Hong and Donming form a trinity that complexly addresses China's – and man's – relationship with the past. All three seek out the past for closure, but only Sanming wants a permanent reconnection, Shen Hong wants to move on and the archaeologist realizes the past is already gone and may not even be able to be saved.

Jia and cinematographer Yu Lik-wai gracefully compose the film in images that are as fluid and forceful as the Yangtze itself.

The humanism of "Still Life" and its reflection on how the Yangtze's rising waters effect the lives on the river's edge suggests the English title doesn't indicate stasis but a declaration that, in places like Fengjie that are coldly abandoned to progress, there is still life.

Posted Sunday, January 27, 2008

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/film/still.life