8/9/2023 0 Comments Still life movie![]() ![]() As the action unfolds, we see buildings being knocked down, rubble cleared, landscapes altered. ![]() Some of it has already been submerged the upper reaches are due for demolition and their inhabitants given notice to quit in preparation of the next elevation of the water-line. And it has meant the entire evacuation of the city of Fengjie, which is where the film is set. This alone has caused it to be condemned as an eco-calamity in the making. The gigantic engineering project, dreamed of by Chinese leaders almost throughout the 20th century, has meant flooding huge areas. Still Life is a palimpsest of ideas and intentions - a meditation on mortality, a contemporary drama-documentary about an entire city preparing to be drowned in the service of China's Three Gorges hydro-electric dam project, and a portrait of a vast nation preparing for turbo-capitalist superpower status, but retaining the autocratic political habits of communism: high-handedly ordering the displacement of a million-and-a-half people, and the abolition of thousands of years of history. This release is part of a retrospective for the director at London's BFI Southbank. Jia Zhangke's Still Life, a deeply felt and quietly impressive film, was the winner of the Golden Lion at last year's Venice film festival, and features the superb and elegant actress Zhao Tao, charismatic star of his previous films, Unknown Pleasures (2002) and Platform (2000). If you need a holiday from coercive cinema, signposted cinema, cinema that uses incessant close-ups and a musical score to tell you every dot and comma of what you are supposed to be thinking and feeling, then this is for you. ![]()
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