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zedz wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 3:07 am An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo) – The most impressive film of the year for me by some margin. Having seen a large chunk of the Cannes slate now, I agree that it was a really good year, but so far it’s mostly made up of better-than-average films by good / great directors rather than knock-down masterpieces. Thus my top ten leans on films that represent ambitious departures for established greats (Martel, Loznitsa and to a lesser extent Maddin and Rosales) and a few very impressive first films.

In the latter category, this is a doozy: a densely novelistic four-hour urban epic, incorporating a couple of dozen significant characters in separate narrative strands that only gradually interconnect and cohere, with four protagonists eventually emerging. Hu favours long, gliding mobile plans-sequences, often following characters in the manner of Bela Tarr, but this doesn’t otherwise have much in common with slow cinema. The action unfolds over less than 24 hours, and it’s the kind of crazily eventful day that would be implausible in a more condensed, less carefully constructed or more formally manic film.

The film is beautifully shot in desaturated colour (a few shots do betray some dodgy digital artefacts owing to the threadbare production) and is expertly paced and acted. It’s one of the best first films I’ve seen, and certainly one of the most ambitious. And unfortunately it’s destined to be one of those great one-offs of cinema, like Night of the Hunter, as Hu Bo killed himself after completing the film.

Trailer

Omensetter wrote: Wed Oct 03, 2018 9:23 pm All the same, it certainly reminds me of where I live. That'll no doubt be your best opportunity to see An Elephant Sitting Still and perhaps A Long Day's Journey into Night.

zedz wrote: Wed Oct 03, 2018 10:34 pm

Omensetter wrote: Wed Oct 03, 2018 9:23 pm All the same, it certainly reminds me of where I live. That'll no doubt be your best opportunity to see An Elephant Sitting Still and perhaps A Long Day's Journey into Night.

An Elephant Sitting Still is the best film of the year to date for me, and it's not an easy sell for home video, so I highly recommend catching it whenever and wherever you can.

A man wakes up and murmurs to his lover : « They say there is an elephant in Manhzouli, it sits there all day long and ignores the world. Or maybe it just enjoys sitting there. » The quirky reputation of this elusive pachyderm becomes a symbol of liberation, escapism and flat out defiance for a handful of protagonists living, or surviving, in an indistinct smoggy city of North-East China.
The reason the still elephant fascinates the characters of this film might be because he’s so mysteriously impervious to the world of pain around him. Maybe they all crave to reach this stoic state of mind, to face the overbearing troubles in their lives, like the Elephant-Buddha.
But this enigmatic eponymous animal could be none other than the spectators themselves… sitting still in front of the silver screen while the world rushes around them at an accelerated pace. Contemplative Cinema aficionados are the last survivors of a post-electronic age. And this film is the cemetery for all these brave elephants.
We are simultaneously reminded of the parable of the Blind Men feeling an elephant by its constituting parts without managing to make sense of the whole picture. One feels the trunk and believes it’s a snake. One feels the side and believe it’s a wall… The film is somehow built in this manner, with four alienated parties missing an outsider’s perspective to fully understand their situation and be understood. Four interlacing pathways.

hearthesilence wrote: Mon Mar 18, 2019 4:17 am I didn't really notice An Elephant Sitting Still until a month ago, and the first thing mentioned in the press is the death of the filmmaker, who committed suicide at age 29, shortly after the movie was completed and long before it premiered. It will remain his only feature film, and I wasn't sure how the circumstances surrounding the film might shape the experience of seeing it, especially given the advance hype and acclaim.

I liked it quite a bit, but it was difficult to sit through. It's a four-hour film with no intermission, but the length didn't make it difficult - it was the unrelenting pessimism. It establishes the world as an awful and hostile place, and by the time we get to the climax, I don't think there was any way the film could convincingly deny that after everything we've seen, even if one doesn't agree with its bleak viewpoint. It's no surprise that the adults are often narcissists - all relationships feel like an open channel to abuse. To the film's credit, all of this rang true, but I wasn't sure if it was going to amount to anything especially profound or edifying. (At one point, one of the characters flat out tells another that life is just plain awful and that's never going to change, a sentiment that's repeated elsewhere by other people.)

But it does amount to something, and when we get there we see that the whole film's been building towards it. I came away from the moment in question feeling that the characters learn to accept their role in everything terrible around them, even if much of it is beyond their control. In doing so, they realize the things they can do despite the limits of their actions and how much (or how little) it can actually change what's so awful about their lives. It says something that soon after this happens, another character comes in and more or less carries out this lesson in the worst and most misguided way possible.

It's quite an achievement, and if it's not truly a great film, it certain shows great promise that to our misfortune will remain unfulfilled.

BenoitRouilly wrote: Wed Mar 20, 2019 10:47 pm I loved this film. And I do think it is truly a great film of this generation.
It is unique in its form because of the shallow focus and the plan-séquence sans countershots.
It is bold as a debut film, at 4h runtime and sticking to it on the editing table even against the advice of his producers...
If you can't take pessimism, you won't be able to appreciate the masterpiece that is Satantango (clocking at 7h22). Béla Tarr was HU Bo's mentor at the FIRST festival in 2016 when he developped his script.
I don't mind pessimistic films when they are beautifuly crafted.

hearthesilence wrote: Thu Mar 21, 2019 12:12 am I didn't know Béla Tarr was his mentor, and it's funny that you mention it before your closing remarks, because years ago when I was making the case for The Turin House as my favorite film of the year, I covered similar ground. More importantly, I never had any reservations about that film's pessimism as it played out.

If I had to rationalize why, it's possible the baggage that came with this film may have played a role - knowing that the filmmaker himself committed suicide didn't overwhelm my thoughts while watching the movie, but it probably nudged my perspective in a certain direction. Satantango and many of Tarr's films feel like they're much more rooted in the political realities of living in Hungary than one's depression - with that in mind I can see how I would take the bleakness in his films very differently.

I don't want to dismiss the filmmaking here - it's very accomplished - but I wouldn't call the shallow focus unique. It was very effective, particularly when he utilizes the vast real estate just past the thin focal plane, but it's definitely not the first time anyone's used it in that manner.

diamonds wrote: Thu Mar 21, 2019 1:28 pmI haven't seen any Tarr, but that comparison up-thread shortchanges the intelligence of Hu Bo's film; it is absolutely firmly rooted in China's political realities. How can you not read the scene where Wu Bei is just screaming across an almost endless sea of debris as a rage against the rapid industrialization that has both created an impoverished class and poisoned the land on which they have to live? The film is full of pointed critiques of the way various social systems are failing: the school comes off as largely ineffectual, social media is tool for ostracism and ridicule, generational gaps appear widespread and almost insurmountable. Not just between the youth and the adults; Wang Jin's storyline suggests a society set up to discard the elderly once they become inconvenient. I don't see the film as merely a suicide note, I see evidence of an artist who was acutely aware of the ugliness in the world he found himself in, and a sensitivity for portraying what that meant for the people most affected by it.

BenoitRouilly wrote: Thu Mar 21, 2019 6:02 pm Turin Horse is apocalyptic because it centers around a father and his daughter and a half-dead horse, for the entirety of the film. They are (almost) alone in the world, and by the end we know there is nowhere to go but to stay in their stone house crushed by the wind, in the middle of a desert. It has clearly the signs of the end of the world. It is practically a fable, very basic and minimalistic.

Whereas An Elephant Sitting Still is nested in reality, the reality of the society, with subcharacters, family, friends, colleagues, neighbours. It is based on the parable of the Elephant, but is very much grounded in real lives, interconnected, if often cross.

zedz wrote: Thu Mar 21, 2019 7:47 pmI think it's pretty glib to assume you can know whatever was troubling the filmmaker by referring to the work of art he created, and glib AND reductive to perform that mental operation in reverse, reading his life into the film.

hearthesilence wrote: Thu Mar 21, 2019 8:01 pm

zedz wrote: Thu Mar 21, 2019 7:47 pmI think it's pretty glib to assume you can know whatever was troubling the filmmaker by referring to the work of art he created, and glib AND reductive to perform that mental operation in reverse, reading his life into the film.

Do you honestly think that's what we're doing? I don't read films as memoirs. I don't know what he went through and couldn't begin to guess. But given what's blatantly said and shown in the film, it's not a stretch to see it as a reflection of troubled thoughts without mistaking it as a piece of voyeurism into the artist's life as well.

zedz wrote: Thu Mar 21, 2019 7:47 pmI think it's pretty glib to assume you can know whatever was troubling the filmmaker by referring to the work of art he created, and glib AND reductive to perform that mental operation in reverse, reading his life into the film.

zedz wrote: Thu Mar 21, 2019 9:21 pm
"Every character seems to be right on the verge of suicide"

These seem to be very clearly readings coloured by the death of the filmmaker, and not based on the actual work itself. The former, for the reasons I gave above, and the latter because it's simply not true.

dda1996a wrote: Thu Mar 21, 2019 9:52 pm

zedz wrote: Thu Mar 21, 2019 7:47 pmI think it's pretty glib to assume you can know whatever was troubling the filmmaker by referring to the work of art he created, and glib AND reductive to perform that mental operation in reverse, reading his life into the film.

Is it though? Sometimes it very clear how a director's personal life feeds into the film (just look at Godard, and Connect Trier's House That Jack Built for examples). Unless I misunderstood your meaning

zedz wrote: Thu Mar 21, 2019 10:24 pm EDIT: Just did some quick research, and it appears that Hu's suicide was due to specific professional frustrations (conflicts with his producers), not because he was overcome by the parlous state of the world. So much for that theory.