"Still Life" is released finally and I have seen it twice already. Perhaps "Secret sunshine" and "Still life" are the Movies of the Year for me though It is June. Still life does not push me to such a terrible situation like Secret Sunshine, but shakes people who see the film.
Before seeing it I read some critiques of Still Life, the strange thing, However, is all writers say the last scene is the best of the best. Someone said Its perfect.
When I saw that scene, I was really stunned of the expression.
If you dont know about Jia Zhangke, you will be just suprised of the surrealistic scenes, and composition. But I can see his change that his focus moves to the people accepting their changing reality from the people who are afraid of changing, are suffered from their reality.
In the film of "Platform", his 2nd film, most of charaters are left. They should endure their life forever. Only Zhongping, who is a woman in the film, left from their reality. A few years ago. Jia Zhangke said about this in a film festival "I don't know where Zhongping went to". Now Jia Zhangke tells us where they are, what they do.
Fungjie is the main city in the film. Fungjie and Sanxia have the picturesque sceanaries. We can know its really beautiful if you see this film. And the cities of antiquity are been sinking in only several years. That is the true reality of people in China and the destiny of them. The owner of the inn moved his inn to a place under bridge, and the mistress of whorehouse decided to move to Guangdong easily. Shenhong also does not hesitate to leave to Shanghai and Sanming will be back to Sanxia to bring his wife and daughter. And the workers with Sanming, too.
But in the end we are faced with crisis. Someday the owner of inn will move to another plave again, and the future of mistress in Guangdong is ambiguous. There is no pleasure in the face of Shenhong leaving, but unrest. How about Sanming and his friends? Nobody assure their future, probably some of them will not come back to their hometown. Jia Zhangke express these uncertainty and unrest as the last scene, the perilousness. And Sanming tured his back with an expressionless face.
As previously said, Many scenes are stange. Jia Zhangke represents those as "surrealism" but I dont agree on. Surrealism is the idea in 1930, 1940s. like the arts of Salvador Dali, Max Ernst and so on. The strangeness of Still Life. I can not express that and his works as one word. Jia Zhangke's style in his movie have to be called as something to express well. One critic in Korea says that "we call Antonioni Neorealism, Dali Surrealism. We have to call JiaZhangke Something, and be sorry not to name his." I do agree. There is no word to represent Jia Zhangke's film.
Sometimes whenever I see Jia Zhangke's films I feel thankful to him.
