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Jia Zhangke
Sanxia Haoren/ Still Life (2006) is an odyssey of sorts set in the
wasteland of a region where the government has decided to demolish entire
villages to make room for the Three Gorges Dam.
The soundtrack of the film is basically the constant sounds of
demolition and traffic. Among the ruins two individuals try to reconstruct
ordinary lives by reuniting with missing spouses after a long hiatus.
The landscape is almost the negation of the idyllic natural landscape of
traditional Chinese painting, and it is also the negation, in another dimension,
of Mao's industrialized China.
The set of the film is a dying city. It is the stage for
the psychological wasteland of destitute lives:
the kid who beats up the victims of
the demolition program, the woman who prostitutes herself in front of her
husband, the woman who is held as a slave to pay for her brother's debt.
There are visual metaphors that appear suddenly and last only a few seconds,
like the building that takes off like the spaceship in a science-fiction film,
or the archeologist (perhaps the only positive character, and coincidentally
the one who is interested in the ancient past)
or the acrobat at the end of the film.
They might be satire rather than metaphysics, as the one director has to be
careful not to criticize the authorities too much. By the same token, one of
the main narrative lines is barely hinted at (the collusion between gangsters,
contractors and officials to "convince" residents to move out of their buildings
quickly: the contractors need to maximize their profit and the officials need
to comply with the party's timetable).
There is no beauty in this film. Everything is ugly: both the landscape, the
society and the individual stories.
Rossellini's postwar films might have been an inspiration, but Zhangke's
characters are symbols of a different kind of destruction, which is more
cultural than physical.
It also rains very often.
The camera slowly surveys the people who are traveling on a crowded boat,
stopping when it reaches a taciturn middle-aged man. When they disembark,
they are forced to watch the show of a magical troupe and forced to pay
for it. The taciturn man has no money. He hires a motorcyclist to take him
to an address that he has written on an old postcard. The motorcyclist takes
him to a place by the river from which he can see the top of a submerged
island: the dam project is flooding all the villages, little by little,
and the village that was on that island is already gone. He is looking for
his wife. His wife's sister cannot help either. He knows that she works
on a boat and might come back any time to the village, but doesn't know
when. His wife's brother is hostile, stating that she is not his wife,
at least so decided the police.
Han takes a room in a humble hotel and finds a job while he waits for the
woman to return. The men there work either in demolition jobs or are thugs
organized in squads to convince residents to leave the buildings that have
to be demolished. Han befriends a kid who likes to watch foreign movies
with lots of shooting and belongs to one of such squads.
Life among the ruins is miserable. There is a brothel in a semi-demolished
building. One of the women who prostitute themselves is the wife of a worker
who lost an arm: she does so in the house where she lives with him, and
with his consent. Han hasn't seen his wife in 16 years and is particularly
anxious to hear about his daughter. The truth surfaces that Han, a coal miner
from a distant region, bought his
wife against her will. He treated her well, but she took the first chance
to run back to her family.
In the meantime, an elegant and polite woman, Shen Hong,
who came on the same boat is looking for her husband
Guo Bin. An archeologist who works by the river, probably to salvage what
they can before the flood, helps her track down his office. He is the boss
of the squad of thugs. His partner is a beautiful lady and there are rumours
that they might have an affair. She hasn't seen him in two years.
When she finds Guo Bin, clearly a wealthy manager with his own car, she tells
him that she is in love with another man and wants a divorce. He shows no
affection for her anyway. She has to leave the following day so she is in a
hurry.
The loudspeakers announce more demolition. Next is the hotel where Han is
staying. The sister of the man who lost one arm argues vigorously with the
local factory manager that he is entitled to compensation, but nothing comes
out of it. The wife has to start packing too.
Han's wife finally arrives. She regrets that she left him. He was a good
husband, after all. The daughter is in another city. Han offers to take back
his wife, but she now belongs to a boat's owner because her brother owes
money to him. Han pledges to pay back the debt. It will take at least one
year of hard work in the mines. They chat alone in a deserted building
overlooking the dying city while another high-rise building is blown up.
He tells his coworkers than the wages are better in the mine region
and they all follow him to the ferry.
An acrobat is walking on a tight-rope between two high-rise buildings that
are being demolished.
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