dir. Jia Zhang-Ke
writ. Zhang Ke Jia, Na Guan, Jiamin Sun
feat. Tao Zhao, Zhou Lan, Sanming Han, Lizhen Ma, Hongwei Wang
Still Life examines the lives of two different protagonists as they seek out lost loved ones along the Yangtse River. In every direction buildings are being destroyed, burying even more of the past than the Three Gorges dam project has already submerged underwater. Clearly, Zhang-Ke has this close in mind as he observes the quiet lives of his characters who seem to have awoken to recognize their alienation and wish to reconnect.
While Zhang-Ke's patient filming style and somber tone achieve a similar feeling to the work of Tsai Ming Liang, his disparate stories and occasional flights of fancy (most notably, a surprise alien spaceship) keep him from rounding the bend to arrive at anything but an assembly of ideas and images, without the subtle, yet notable turns that Ming Liang understands are required to puncuate those ideas, to tie the package together. The viewer is left with more than just a beautiful sense of longing, but also an emptiness, the movie lacking a greater substance.
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