Still Life (PG)

Thursday 16th October 2008
Zhang Ke Jia 2006
China/Hong Kong
Language: Chinese

Zhang Ke Jia's film follows two parallel tales about people who arrive at a town on the Yangtze river searching for their estranged spouses.  This stunning film paints a vivid portrait of a rapidly changing landscape and country in a state of upheaval.

Score:    61.61%

Some members' comments

All as grim as imagined and based on a real scenario.
A strange film.  Loved the industrial noises and surreal quality of the photography.

Very different.
This is why we have a film society.
Fascinating and political - my memory is that that is just how it is.
Aspects of China not seen on a tourist trail - still trying to work out what it was all about.
Amazing insight into Chinese culture.
Wonderful soundscape - some remarkable images - an abject sense of dislocation amidst economic gradiosity.
Inscrutable
Rather slow paced but interesting insight into social price
China is paying for its amazing economic development.

Great scenery, plot difficult.
Fragmented - lots of inscrutible moments.  Boring overall, slow.
I shall not go there.  Perhaps I missed something?
It worked beter as a documentary than a drama.

Boring.
If any more Chinese films are available, let's not have them.