Still Life
(SANXIA HAOREN)

The penniless Han Sanming comes to Fengjie to find his wife – and a daughter he has never met – after years of separation. Shen Hong, a nurse from the South, is trying to find her husband, now a businessman, to settle their divorce. The city is falling apart, as it will soon be engulfed by the Yangtze River when the Three-Gorges dam comes into operation. Still Life is Jia Zhang-ke’s most masterful film, and also the most ominous. Distances between the individual and the state have become rifts and never been so flagrant. The digital image – enveloping and close at time to impressionist painting – freezes the landscapes into still lifes. They will soon become phantoms – like souvenir photos or scenes on the back of banknotes, having no more power than a flimsy symbol. MM