Caught by the Tides (2024)

Here’s an unusual picture, a kind of lightly fictionalized, impressionistic memoir of China in this century. It’s directed by Jia Zhang-ke and what makes it unusual is that he has used footage shot by him across this century, both in his personal life and for movies he has made. The only one I can vouch for is Still Life (2006), but I can tell you it’s a great picture, well worth tracking down. Caught by the Tides also includes scenes from Unknown Pleasures (2002) and Ash Is Purest White (2018), which I intend to seek out. All three feature Zhang-ke’s wife, Tao Zhao, who is rendered a silent woman in this picture for some reason, at least until she lets out a yelp in the last shot. By that point I was too muddled to really get it. There are many lovely shots here—notably those from the Three Gorges area and its massive damming project, featured in Still Life—and some reliably nice musical interludes too, EDM at random to juice up the energy, and pop tunes presumably for the nostalgic feels. But it must be said there’s little by way of obvious narrative here—it’s a guess for me (and largely because of what I’ve read about it) that this is even a historical allegory about China at all. My own sense from my Western perspective, and my distance, is that the 2008 Olympics were a certain cultural high-water mark in China. That seems to be supported by the way this movie goes. My further sense is that China continues to be an economic juggernaut poised well for the future. The commitment to EVs and alternative, sustainable energy sources are just obvious examples. Early scenes in Caught by the Tides gradually give way to scenes of the pandemic, where arguably (again supported by what we see) it was taken appropriately seriously, much unlike the US experience. So the movie may be a good place for testing ideas about China. I take Zhang-ke, based on Still Life, as a great filmmaker and now more than ever want to get to some of his other work. But Caught by the Tides felt confused and weak as much as anything, too allusive and ambiguous for me to get a good grip on what it’s all about.

Still Life (2006)

San xia hao ren, China / Hong Kong, 108 minutes

Director: Zhang-ke Jia

Writers: Zhang-ke Jia, Na Guan, Jiamin Sun

Photography: Nelson Lik-wai Yu

Music: Giong Lim

Editor: Jinlei Kong

Cast: Sanming Han, Tao Zhao, Hongwei Wang

Like the Hole album Live Through This, the deceptively bland title of this movie is open to numerous interpretations—most obviously a type of painting or photography, a description of animals holding position, and a heartening observation of the will to live. In one way or another, all those aspects are represented in Still Life. I have seen it described as a movie in which nothing happens, so caveats, but I think really what is happening may be so monumental it’s almost bigger than perception. The broad setting is China’s Three Gorges Dam in the late stages of that massive, multi-decade project. The ancient town of Fengjie, established circa 300 BCE, is slowly evacuating, preparing to be flooded and submerged in coming weeks. Two characters wander into this chaos—Sanming (Sanming Han) and Shen Hong (Tao Zhao)—and both are looking for people long absent from their lives.

It’s fair to say very little happens in this movie, at least on the surface. The two characters don’t know each other and never cross paths, though they seem to have a random connection in at least one person. Sanming is searching for a daughter he has not seen in 16 years since she was an infant and Shen Hong is looking for a husband who has been away working for two years. She has an urgent message for him. Still Life is slow and a little cryptic, never helping us much with these two and what they are about. But the feelings they raise in their determined, patient searches, plus the scope of the dam project literally consuming the town of Fengjie and everything all around us, somehow make it wholly satisfying to follow, absorb, and gawk at.

Platform (2000)

Zhantai, Hong Kong / China / Japan / France, 154 minutes
Director/writer: Zhangke Jia
Photography: Nelson Lik-wai Yu
Music: Yoshihiro Hanno
Editor: Jinlei Kong
Cast: Hongwei Wong, Tao Zhao, Jing Dong Liang, Tian-yi Yang, Bo Wang

The first time I sat down to look at Platform, earlier this year, I came away with a germ of an impression that it is something on the order of an Asian Fame. My Halliwell's (2008 edition) dismisses it as mediocre, with zero stars, complaining about the overuse of long shots. Zero stars in that system is not as bad as it sounds, but it's not good. Watching Platform, I glazed over, I admit. I was watching it from the perspective of an ongoing long-term self-imposed obligation, attempting to track down and write up the highest-ranking entrants on the list of 21st-century movies at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? For the four years I have been aware of the list, it has been remarkably volatile. This is not that surprising, given the relatively small sample size and brief time to assimilate, and indeed it's one of the most interesting features of that list. It has rewritten its top 10 by half in my time of following the annual updates.

Platform has been steady at #17 since 2013. It spent 2011 and 2012 in the 40s, and before that, for the first two years of the list, it was over 100. I suspect the primary source of its high regard lies with a 2005 review by Jonathan Rosenbaum in which he labels it "one of the greatest of all Chinese films" but I can't explain how that has anything to do with the recent surges of support. I appreciate many of the disparate pieces of Platform—the burnishing of its central metaphor, the use of pop music, the sense of time and place—but for the most part I flail to find meaningful connecting points, beyond the generic anomie, which I can always get behind at least a little. I found a nice appreciation of it by Joel Bocko at the Wonders in the Dark blog. I won't be able to give it anywhere near as thoughtful of a treatment.