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STILL LIFE
Written & Directed by Jia Zhang-ke
Produced by Xu Pengle, Wang Tianyun & Zhu Jiong
Director of Photography, Yu Likwai
Edited by Khung Jinlei
Music by Lim Giong
Released New Yorker Films
China/Hong Kong. 108 min. Not Rated
With Han Sanming, Zhao Tao, Li Zhu Bing & Wang Hongwei

Quiet and beautiful, Jia Zhang-ke’s Still Life is just as it sounds – a still, moving portrait of the effects of the Three Gorges Dam. Many of the director’s works, often referred to as a hybrid of narrative and documentary film, owe more to the neo-realistic works of Vittorio De Sica than mainstream Chinese cinema. Much like how the neo-realists used non-professional actors, Jia has cast Han Sanming in the starring role, also named Sanming. The former coal miner has appeared in three other Zhang-Ke films. Furthermore, there is the directors’ shared unease toward their changing society, though Jia brings the dissent to a subtle murmur opposed to De Sica’s blatant indignation.

After 16 years, Sanming returns to the 2,000-year-old old town of Fengjie, which is about to be completely submerged, to find his runaway wife as well as their daughter he’s never seen. The film follows the laborer as he finds demolition work to pay for his dingy hotel room and waits, patiently, for information on his wife. At midpoint, Jia abruptly shifts the focus to middle-class Shen Hong (Zhao Tao), who has journeyed to Fengjie to find her husband who disappeared two years earlier. The second story line feels slightly misplaced; it begins and resolves in the middle of the film with Sanming’s more engaging story used as the frame.

Little ever occurs. The minimalistic plot serves as a means to reveal the economic and personal devastation of the power project, which has displaced the one million plus population to surrounding regions. Friends and family lose touch, citizens aren’t compensated for their lost belongings, and businesses are relocated without warning.

The extremely low-key acting is far from spectacular, and Jia makes some odd choices, including two rather surreal moments that are never explained and seem so far removed from the style of the film that they could be leftovers from an earlier draft that was going to offer a more mystical resolution. Despite these disconcerting moments, the fate of the two out-of-towners is unassumingly poignant.

Yu Likwai’s breathtaking cinematography reveals the beauty and devastation of Fengjie, which becomes the main character. Yu constructs most of the film in wide two shots; Jia is more concerned for the broader picture than in dramatic momentum. Sanming and Shen Hong are nearly lost against the backdrop of the verdant and mist-shrouded mountains and the ever-present Yangtze River. However, the mystical beauty of the film is enough to make this film powerful, despite a sometimes laboriously slow pace and the modest acting. Dustin L. Nelson
January 23, 2008