Still Life [2006]
Jia Zhang Ke’s 2006 film ‘Sanxia Haoren’ (English title ‘Still Life’) opened events for Dublin’s Chinese New Year celebrations. The sleeper winner of the Golden Lion Award for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival that year, it is a film that deserved more than the limited release it received.
The Chinese (pinyin I think?) name of the movie, ‘Sanxia Haoren’ literally translates to “Good people of the Three Gorges”. It is set in a small town or city on the Yangtze river that is slowly being destroyed by the building of the Three Gorges Dam. The story centres on two characters who have returned after years to look for their spouses for two vastly different reasons.
The move runs with a steady pace of near hypnosis. The studious cinematography and rainforest blanket of ambient sounds within each scene more than enough to envelope in a rare concentration of everything that is going on before you. A weave of small things, caught as if almost on the offhand. We find it is in the small things that Jia Zhang Ke shows us something bigger and greater. That in opening his arms to show us just this cog in the greater workings of China, he is saying, “Here. See. Welcome to the machine.”
The film begins with a boat journey up the Yangzte river; from there we follow the first of our two main characters, Han Sanming, in the beginnings of his journey to search for his daughter whom his wife ran away with sixteen years before. We follow him through long silences and simple conversations, building from simple brush strokes to a complex picture within which you cannot help but empathise with Han.
We slide from Han to Shen Hong, who is searching for the husband who left their home in Shanxi two years earlier. As with Han, her search is again one filled with aggravation and frustration as she simply tries to find the husband who has made little to no effort to stay in contact with her. More than Han’s story, Shen’s moves obliquely and in that way captures feminine obfuscation quite succinctly.
From the slightly confusing rockets to the tightrope walker, the film is filled with symbolism and metaphor. Elsewhere, scenes are introduced by a brief interaction around something, such as a cigarette, then the Chinese symbol for cigarettes or tobacco appears and while the two plots are progressed we are also shown how what place and interaction that object has in Chinese society. A technique that only further strengthens the documentary feel within this drama.
For those wishing a window into everyday Chinese culture, ‘Still Life’ offers that with exceptional elegance. While at the same time, it shows the incredible impact a project like the Three Gorges dam is having not just on the surrounding nature but on the people it is designed ultimately to help. Jia himself has said
“The impact of the Three Gorges project is phenomenal. It’s not something the government can cover up.”
Perhaps it is because of this, that unlike his contemporaries in Chinese cinema, Jia’s film was not only approved by the state Film Bureau (SARFT) but was also co-produced by the state-operated Shanghai Film studio. Maybe, faced with something of such immensity, the Chinese government has decided to be open to an extent about the impact and to be frank, from watching this film, blunt. Something that in many ways; is quite a refreshing change of pace from the Chinese government.
Granted, there is the worry, that on a cultural level, perhaps they do not understand just how grim the film depicts Chinese society. Which is why I made my earlier statement regarding feeling slightly sorry for the Chinese Ambassador, who introduced a movie he had not yet seen as the opening event for Chinese New Year in Dublin and also as a piece in the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue.
Having watched the film with a companion and having had the opportunity to sit down and discuss it. I cannot say that you walk away from it with any positive feelings toward the current Chinese regime or China. Yes, there exists a beautiful culture, but there is the sensation that it is getting smothered under a mutant bastard child of communism and capitalism that is driving a hideous dehumanising machine of Industrialisation unchecked.
Yes, it promotes a dialogue on culture, but from what I’ve seen, it is one of thanks that you do not live in China. That you are not being ground up in the wheels of a machine that may or may not have a cockpit or pilot, a place where the quiet suffering has been politely likened to the tank factories of World War II Russia — except, a whole country — eating itself from the inside out. Where you won’t worry about supposed freedoms because you’re too busy being worked to death.
It is a statement of Jia’s growing skill as a director that he presents the stories and their surroundings without any comment or seeming bias, while still managing to wring humanity from the relentlessly bleak reality the characters inhabit. One you feel endlessly thankful you are not forced to co-exist in with them.
It is for these reasons; that I cannot help but feel that opening Chinese New Year in Dublin with this film was done with perhaps just a measure of deviousness. Warts and all is good, but for a regime trying to gain wider acceptance and place on a global stage, you cannot help but feel that ‘Still Life’ while extremely important and beautifully executed, does not do it any favours at all.
Originally published at 4/3/2008
