“Still Life,” the winner of the Golden Lion at the 2006 Venice Film Festival, is finally getting theatrical release in the U.S. courtesy of the entrepreneurial New Yorker. It's a mystery why the work of the Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke, who previously made the equally impressive Platform, Unknown Pleasures, and The World, is so little known here.
Some recurrent themes run through the work of Jian Zhnag-ke: Tradition versus modernity, the inevitability of technological innovation but also human the price involved in achieving that. Known for his meticulous attention to historical and sociological detail, he employs a style that represents a unique hybrid of documentary and narrative- fictional cinema.
In “Still Life,” an empathetic portrait of those left behind by a modernizing society, great changes have come to dominate the town of Fengjie due to the construction of the Three Gorges Hydro Project. One of the devastating results is that many families (estimated at close to a million people) that had lived there for many generations have had to relocate to other cities.
Fengjie's old town, which has a 2000-year history, has been torn down and submerged forever, but its new neighborhood hasn't been finished yet, so it's a place in transition, caught in turmoil, in between two lifestyles. There are still things that need to be salvaged and yet there are also things that must be left behind.
Dramatic and traumatic life-changing choices face both Sanming (Han Sanming), a miner traveling to Fengjie in search of his ex-wife of 16 years, and Shen Hong (Zhao Tao), a nurse who has come to Fengjie to look for her husband who she hasn't seen in two years. In the process, both Sanming and Shen find their respective partners, but they also have to decide what's worth salvaging in their lives and what they need to let go.
In the press notes, Jia Zhang-ke is quoted as saying: “I once walked into someone's room by accident and saw dust-covered articles on the desk. Suddenly it seemed the secrets of still life fell upon me. The old furniture, the stationery on the desk, the bottles on the windowsills and the decorations on the walls all took on an air of poetic sorrow.
'Still Life' represents a reality that has been overlooked by us. Although time has left deep marks on it, it still remains silent and holds the secrets of life. I entered this condemned city with my camera and I witnessed demolitions and explosions. In the roaring noise and fluttering dust, I gradually felt that life really could blossom in brilliant colors even in a place with such desperation.”
What's remarkable about “Still Life” is its non-judgmental approach, its detached treatment of a subject that in the hands of another director could have been easily nostalgic and sentimental. Indeed, as helmer, Jia Zhang-ke doesn't preach going back to old time mores, instead offering a sober look at how life and its inevitable socio-economic-technological forces make tremendous impact, positive as well as negative, on the most remote and traditional places.
The Three Gorges Hydro Project
The Yangtze River is the longest river of Asia, stretching 3,900 miles in length East to West across China. The river passes through the Yangtze Gorges where during periods of heavy rains, floods caused by the river have occasionally left a wake of great destruction. The Three Gorges Hydro project on the Yangtze River was first conceived by the Chinese leader Sun Yat-Sen who ordered engineering prospects at the beginning of the 20th century.
Soon after the foundation of the People's Republic of China, Mao Tzedong proposed the Three Gorges Project again and did surveys in the Three Gorges area in person. The prospect, design and argumentation of the Project took about four decades to complete. In 1994, the construction officially began. Scheduled for completion in 2009, the dam will measure about 600 feet high and about 1.5 miles wide.
It is expected to help control the flooding of the Yangtze River Valley while also utilizing river flow to make the Three Gorges the largest electricity-generating facility in the world. However, the completion of the Project will leave a lake about 400 miles long formed behind the dam, which will force the relocation of more than 1 million people and permanently flood many historical sites.
Credits
Written and Directed by JIA ZHANG-KE
Associate Screenwriters SUN JIANMIN GUAN NA
Director of Photography YU LIKWAI
Editor KHUNG JINLEI
Art Directors LIANG JINDONG
LIU QIANG
Production Director WANG YU
Music Composer LIM GIONG
Artistic Consultant LIN XUDONG
Producers XU PENGLE, WANG TIANYUN, ZHU JIONG
Executive Producers CHOW KEUNG, DAN BO, REN ZHONGLUN
Cast
Sanming HAN SANMING
Shen Hong ZHAO TAO
Guo Bing LI ZHU BING
Wang Dong Ming WANG HONGWEI
Missy Ma MA LIZHEN
Huang Mao LAN ZHOU
Guo Bin LI ZHUBIN
Mr. He XIANG HAIYU
Brother Pony ZHOU LIN
Little Yong HUANG YONG
Old Ma LUO MINGWANG
