Sanxia Haoren (Still Life) (2006)
Average Rating: 7.8/10
Reviews Counted: 48
Fresh: 43 | Rotten: 5
Zhangke spellbindingly captures the human cost of rapid industrialization in modern China.
Average Rating: 7.7/10
Critic Reviews: 19
Fresh: 17 | Rotten: 2
Zhangke spellbindingly captures the human cost of rapid industrialization in modern China.
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Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 3,450
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Movie Info
Jia Zhang Ke's haunting minimalist drama Still Life (aka Sanxia Haoren) takes as its focal point the real-life construction of the Three Gorges Hydro Project and it accompanying massive dam over the Yangtze River in China (allegedly the largest manmade dam in the world) -- a project that required engineers to flood the surrounding territories, including the two millennia-old city of Fengjie. Jia interweaves two stories in connection with the geographical transformation of that area. In the
Sep 5, 2006 Wide
Nov 25, 2008
New Yorker Films
Cast
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Tao Zhao
Shen Hong -
Han Sanming
Han Sinming -
Wang Hong Wei
Wang Dong Ming -
Li Zhubin
Guo Bing -
-
Zhou Lin
Huang Mao -
Ma Lizhen
Missy Ma -
-
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All Critics (51) | Top Critics (20) | Fresh (43) | Rotten (5) | DVD (3)
More than a million people have been displaced in central China in the cause of generating electrical power to meet the needs of the future; Jia's flowing river of a picture washes over a few of them as they adjust to life's currents in the present.
Top CriticAn extraordinary glimpse into the psychology, subtext and austere reality of modern Chinese culture.
Never has destruction looked more beautiful than the demolished buildings in Jia Zhang-ke's Still Life.
Writer-director Jia Zhangke is a keen observer of the effects of the break-neck modernization that is stampeding China toward a future that no one can predict, control, or contain.
Jia Zhang-ke is a new auteur making his mark. Embraced abroad on the international festival circuit, if less welcome on screens in China, this writer-director works in a genre that could be called globalist.
Still Life is the first great film of the year. It's beautiful but so much more--full of subtle feeling, framed by a monstrous, eroding landscape.
A lyrical pic that brilliantly blends together documentary and fantasy to paint an evocative picture of modern China that is free from the usual Red Chinese propaganda.
Observant and acts as a record of the inevitability of change, even ones mandated not by nature but by the government.
Playful and moody, naturalistic and surreal, Still Life is a film not to be missed.
The despondent tone is lifted by moments of hope and, surprisingly, hilarity.
Still Life is a moody undertaking, with little action but plenty going on.
Jia Zhang Ke is perhaps the most distinctive director working in China now.
Still Life is all about these common people existing in a world that seems more and more unreal
Simply one of the best films of last year, this year, or any year likely to come.
Director Jia Zhang-ke sees the urbanization of China through the eyes of the relocated laborers.
Jia has taken supposedly naturalistic approach to filmmaking and, here at least, uses amateur actors and other fresh faces. A few of these newcomers are stiff and appear to be uncomfortable on camera.
The rising waters of the Yangtze become a melancholy backdrop for a diaspora in which people try to establish some connection in a place where their old lives literally are being washed away.
Richly rewarding to those willing to roll with its deliberate rhythms.
Audience Reviews for Sanxia Haoren (Still Life)
Super Reviewer
[font=Century Gothic][/font]
[font=Century Gothic]In the meantime, Shen Hong(Zhao Tao) also arrives in town looking for her husband who she has not heard from in two years.[/font]
[font=Century Gothic][/font]
[font=Century Gothic]The central theme of "Still Life" is the price of progress. The bitter irony of the Three Gorges Dam is that it is likely to help other parts of the country more than the people who are being dislocated. Fengjie is definitely a fascinating setting for a movie and a good starting place for an exploration of forced mobility in Chinese society. So, while the movie handles the social criticism well, the drama is handled less successfully, as neither storyline is developed as well as they could have been.[/font]
Super Reviewer
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Foreign Titles
- Still Life (DE)
- Still Life (UK)
