Sanxia haoren (2006)

Director:

Zhang Ke Jia

Writers:

Zhang Ke Jia (screenplay) and
Na Guan (writer)

Release Date:

16 November 2006 (Hong Kong)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Plot:

Citizens return to a flooded town to salvage what they can and say good-bye to things they lost.

Plot Keywords:

Ex Wife | River | Dam | Tea | Liquor

Awards:

9 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Tao Zhao	...	Shen Hong
Zhou Lan	...	Huang Mao
Sanming Han	...	Sanming
Lizhen Ma	...	Missy Ma
Hongwei Wang	...	Wang Dongming
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Kai Chen
Ronghu Chen
Jian Chieng
Chuanan Fang
Zhongming He
Yong Huang
Deping Jiang
Shiping Jiang
Tianyah Lan
Bin Li
Fengmin Li
Jingsheng Li
Lunshuang Li
Changqiao Liu
Ping Liu
Yougzhong Li
Younghu Li
Zhubin Li
Xiaomao Long
Mingwang Luo
Qiang Lu
Xiang Ma
Jianlin Pan
Zhugui Qian
Changxiu Tan
Ling Tang
Jiquan Tian
Jianghong Wang
Qingsung Wang
Shengfu Wei
Haiyu Xiang
Longzhen Yang
Shengtao Yang
Daiqi Yu
Shengquan Zhang
Zuoping Zhang
Lin Zhou
Jicheng Zhu
Yong Zhung
Xiaoping Zou

Also Known As:

Still Life (International: English title) (USA) (new title)

Runtime:

111 min

Country:

China | Hong Kong

Language:

Mandarin

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Portugal:M/12 (Qualidade) | Brazil:12 | South Korea:12 | UK:PG | Argentina:Atp

Filming Locations:

Fengjie, China

Company:

Shanghai Film Studios

Trivia:

Chosen by "Les Cahiers du cinéma" (France) as one of the 10 best pictures of 2007 (#02, tied with "Inland Empire" and "Death Proof").

Quotes:

Brother Mark: You're a nostalgist.
Shen Hong: We can't forget who we are.

Offhand and astonishing

Though perhaps 'Still Life'/'Sanxia haoren' (the Variety reviewer thought so) is primarily for the Jia devotee or the festival-goer (it's already been awarded the Golden Lion at Venice) and certainly it's totally noncommercial, it's a lovely, hypnotic piece of work, another haunting picture of the vast creation, disruption, destruction that is modern China from that country's most exciting and original younger-generation filmmaker.

There are layers of irony in the title, because in the incredibly turbulent, ceaselessly active events on screen in this world of life that is anything but "still," the most amazing images slip by without comment. A construction boss on a rampart one evening cell-phones a technician and says, "The VIP's are here. Why aren't the lights on? I'll count to three; then turn on. One, two, three. . ." and a huge bridge and arch are suddenly illuminated behind him. One of the two estranged couples the film follows to tentative reunions is talking with a vast city behind them and in the background a big skyscraper suddenly, silently collapses. There is no comment. It just miraculously happens. In the final shot, amid the debris of the Three Gorges where the world's largest dam will eventually displace 1.4 million people, Han Sanming (non-actor Han Sanming's actual name), a mine worker who's come to find his wife and daughter, who left him sixteen years ago, stands looking out at the urban landscape and a trapeze artist is quietly walking across a tightrope between tall buildings. Again, no comment.

Han Sanming can't find his wife right away and her brother doesn't trust him at first, so he stays for months, working with the brother in demolition. A perky young fellow, who quotes John Wu star Chow Yun Fat and imitates Hong Kong gangster gestures, befriends Han Sanming and they put each other's numbers in their cell phones--a contemporary pledge of solidarity that has a sad sequel later. The young fellow, who could easily have been one of the lost, hopeful young men in Jia's 2002 Unknown Pleasures, is lost in a demolition accident and gets a sea burial like the one accorded to Johnny Depp's character in Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man.

Focused on the displacement of people for a vast industrial and engineering project, Still Life also contrasts classes--the humble working-class stiff who can make 50 yuan a day pulling down walls or 200 going down in a coal mine not knowing if he'll come back out, versus the handsome lady, Shen Hong (Zhao Tao) whose estranged building magnate husband she wants to divorce because she's found a younger man. She has options; Han Sanming is simply drifting and lonely. And in the background for both, though, is the enormous turbulence and activity in which we see both protagonists as tiny helpless figures, their own lives indeed "still life" by comparison.

There's another unexpected, astonishing sequence of a fat rock singer, naked from the waist up like most of the Three Gorges demolition workers Han Sanming encounters and drenched in sweat. He sings of nostalgia for his youth, a time when everybody was happy , and old men in the audience shed tears while garish go-go girls gyrate: where does this fit in? This is another symbol of social upheaval. But what is really happening? Won't Chinese society have to return to its heritage of Mao and the Eighties aftermath chronicled in another of Jia's unwieldy masterpieces, the 2000 Platform? Perhaps the titles Still Life ironically points to the way people are frozen in isolation (broken couples, estranged children) and unhappiness (or quiet desperation) in a China that all the rampant economic progress both masks and perpetuates.

After his colorful land pointed but somewhat leaden 2004 The World/Shijie Jia Zhang-Ke has shown again as in Platform and Unknown Pleasures that he can touch and astonish. The human events are dwarfed by capitalist Progress in the new China, but people (after all, they are a zillion of them there) are still very much in the foreground. \Still Life is an impressive, organic-feeling movie that refers to Jia's earlier films but, extraordinarily, seems to bring together both post-war Italian neo-realism and the desolate urban landscapes of Michelangelo Antonioni.

Seen in Paris, October 21, 2007 at the MK2 Hautefeuille.