Given a generous reappraisal at the NFT throughout February, the 2006 Golden Lion-winner Still Life continues ‘Sixth generation' Chinese writer/director Jia Zhangke's spiritual observation of the changing socio-economic landscape of contemporary China. Stylistically in line with the adsorbing endurance tests that were Unknown Pleasures and The World, Jia's film depicts these social changes in poetic and sometimes quite startlingly surreal ways, in an attempt to deepen the audiences' understanding of the implications of survival in an often cold and venal society. Taking the form of parallel stories, Still Life follows the journeys of two individuals struggling in their efforts to track down their long lost partners in crumbling Fengjie: a town on the Yangtze River undergoing demolition to make way for phase three of the Three Gorges Dam project.

It's a potent enough juxtaposition, with a beautifully extended opening shot that takes in the claustrophobic ambiance of huddled commuters in a floating vessel and then embraces the beautiful vast open exterior plains of China, (lensed with crisp and intoxicating exuberance by Jia's regular cinematographer Nelson Yu Lik-wai). From here on we follow the travels of Han Sanming, an impoverished coal-miner from Shanxi in search of his teenage daughter from a former paid-for-bride, who left him directly after the child's birth 16 years ago. This is also where we arrive at one of the film's many ironic and potent moments: Han hitches a lift with a teenage biker who takes him to his former residence but Han is shocked and bemused to find the location almost completely submerged - in essence no longer existing. This haunting flipside to geographical familiarity is used to communicate how the past is being inevitably demolished, further serving to frame the characters in a time and place they no longer understand.

The film's four chapter headings (‘Cigarettes', ‘Liquor', ‘Tea' and ‘Toffee') also highlight the main passing commodities that characters share and exchange in the narrative and serve to link the parallel stories; the other of which following Shen Hong (played by Jia regular Zhao Tao), a young nurse from Taiyuan, who arrives in Fengjie to seek her absentee husband's approval for a divorce. Though Han and Shen never actually meet their experiences often mesh: particularly when they both witness the same sweeping UFO, which passes both of them by in a bizarre moment of surreal over-indulgence that perhaps marks the film's only other minor misjudgement, (the other being the sudden metaphoric rocket-launch of a modern monument).

From the sudden background destruction of a building block, to the magical illumination of a steal bridge at night that becomes a stunning backdrop for a clutch of ballroom party mountain dwellers, Jia lavishes in startlingly spectacle for brooding effect. 

Some critics have noted the characters decidedly un-Chinese motivation to confront and lay emotional pains to rest and indeed it is completely to Jia's credit that he mounts this atypical odyssey: one of the finest and most touching scenes involves Han's sorrowful reconciliation with his former wife Missy, which reaches a touching crescendo.  

Still Life is a truly mesmerising and astonishing effort from one of the most revered Chinese directors working today. It challenges your own understanding of contemporary China by refusing to dwell in easy resolve and opens up a raw honesty that encourages a deeper, plentiful understanding of emotional complexities amongst a slowly eroding environment.

Oliver Pfeiffer

 

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