Feng liu yi dai

What I like about Jia Zhangke is that his works of Chinese cinema is highly interesting and something that feels so different to any other filmmakers in China. In many ways, using strange digital camera approaches, approaches on themes, the music, the characters and setting. This movie feels like a statement of his career, in a documentary and fiction fashion, it's a mesmerizing experience.

Using archive footage and blending both non-linear fiction and non-fiction, Zhangke presents a melancholic and avant-garde narrative and atmosphere that is filled with wonderful presentations and themes explored. Presenting characters, performances, music, and dialogue that feels realistic and almost as if you are observing the daily lives of an individual and nature of human beings.

Zhao Tao continues to shine with her natural performance and language with each scene she is displayed on, the soundtrack choices are interesting, and the whole fiction vs nonfiction scenario, while it will put off many viewers, I found it to be interesting and a great experiment of a story.

I don't suggest this as the first movie to watch for Jia Zhangke though, but I say it's amazing.

A meditation on love and passing time; a woman searches for her lost lover within the rubble of a deconstructed city as well as her own shattered memory, the Three Gorges Dam consumes cities whole just as time swallows people, women sing and dance in joy and hurt, and dreams surface and submerge again. Lives are changing, and we often don't notice.

Utilizing primarily b-roll and outtakes from previous films, Zhang-ke weaves a cerebral and imaginative tale. While I wish the material was all new and put together with more of a cohesive story in mind, I can't deny that Zhang-ke has a magical and mesmerizing touch in all that he does, even in his wandering. Seen at the Toronto International Film Festival.

This is a movie about smoking, chain smoking in fact, by people who don't even know how to smoke. Left overs from prior movies, or stuff shot when you were wandering the streets with a spare digital camera. Tie it up with shots of a woman staring out into space, walking around lost, eating. There's actually a narrative on a black & white screen like in old silent movies, except there's no story to tell.

There's actually a scene where the woman tries to get out of a bus, but some man keeps catching her and throwing her back in her seat. This is repeated at least 10 times, I guess there were 10 takes. Might as well use them all. Lots and lots of sentimental songs, shots of crumbling buildings, boats going down the river. Heard enough?

The most striking thing about this film is seeing the natural aging of the actors, but the collage of the different projects into a single film is rather shaky and risks turning off several people at the start of the film. Several bold choices from the directors, including the use of intertitles and what appear to be images taken from surveillance cameras. When we get to the end of the film, we can be moved and consider this project as a good film, especially with the evolution of the relationship between the two main characters, but the first part prevents us from being very generous for the rating of the work. Good use of music (it's more of a musical film than a dialogue film). Good soundtrack. Good finale.

Jia Zhangke had a lot of leftovers so he mixed that up and added something new and here we are.

It works, although the first part is the weakest, being the least focused and padded with unrelated documentary-like shots. It really reminded me of West of the Tracks, the mammoth documentary by Wang Bing, with its focus on workers and their downtime empty pursuits. There's minimal narration and it kind of hurts the overall story, lucky for me I had seen Unknown Pleasures and was familiar with the main events still so I was clutching to the few scenes where Qiaoqiao appears. The shift to the Still Life scenes was most welcome for me, it is the strongest. I liked that movie a lot and a lot of these leftover scenes work very well in the narrative. I have never thought of connecting the female character from Unknown Pleasures, Still Life (and Ash is the Purest White) and I don't think they were intended to be the same woman at various stages initially, but it makes sense, there is some commonality to her biography, apart from the director using the same actors all the time.

The last time jump serves as the "where are they now" bit and it is pretty sad, but also a little vindicating to see Guo Bin so old and frail. Although she has clearly aged herself, Qiaoqiao appears quite healthy. And another sad thing is that it's apparent that she had really loved that man, which I never would have believed from the first movie.

Surprisingly, this movie somehow manages to focus more on the relationships between the characters than on the social and societal changes and their impact on people at large. It's very much still there in the background and I was surprised they still have those loudspeakers blasting the news, but I latched on to Qiaoqiao mostly. Well, there's another reason for that, Zhao Tao is an amazing woman, you just can't take your eyes off her. And most likely her director husband is aware of that effect and amplifies it.

So the title really conveys the essence of the movie and truly two thirds of it are really good, the first part I could do without.