Deceptively prosaic and deeply humane...
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05/02/07
Still Life (2008)
91
%
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Reviews Counted:43
Fresh:39
Rotten:4
Average Rating:7.8/10
Consensus: Zhangke spellbindingly captures the human cost of rapid industrialization in modern China.
Theatrical Release:2006
Synopsis: Fengjie’s old town is already under water, but its new neighbourhood hasn’t been finished yet. There are things to salvage and there are things to leave behind… Han Sanming, a miner, travels to... [More]
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Reviews for Still Life
As much an exploration of emotional and cultural problems in modern day China, as it is the tale of one man's lost love.
06/14/08
Both a docudrama with obvious social and historical relevance and a subtle, slow, quietly powerful chronicle of human loss.
05/03/07
Top CriticJia 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.
02/22/08
Director Jia Zhang-ke sees the urbanization of China through the eyes of the relocated laborers.
09/26/08
Still Life can be frustratingly slow but it's the effect that it has in the hours and days after the lights come up that makes it such a remarkable experience.
02/11/08
Nothing much happens in Still Life, its atmosphere is everything. The characters, like the half-flooded town itself, linger between the past and an unknown future.
12/19/07
Still Life is all about these common people existing in a world that seems more and more unreal
10/13/08
Playful and moody, naturalistic and surreal, Still Life is a film not to be missed.
07/17/09
Despite all this desolation and depression, Still Life is an extremely beautiful movie: the river and the green mountains on both sides of it extend into the distance in majestic panoply; gray clouds hang over the scene like painted backdrops.
01/14/08
Top CriticClick to read the article
03/27/09
Winner of the top award at 2006 Venice Festival, this sober look at the human price of inevitable technological changes (building of dam on Yangtze River) continues Jia Zhang-ke's explortaion of his recurrent concern with tradition versus modernity.
02/18/08
Jia Zhangke has an uncanny knack for grounding his portraits of Chinese alienation in settings that are at once schematically allegorical and tangibly lived-in.
01/11/08
An artful and philosophical film, filled with visual riches and mystifying scenes, about change, loss, and the difficulty of letting go.
02/01/08
Never has destruction looked more beautiful than the demolished buildings in Jia Zhang-ke's Still Life.
05/09/08
What's striking about Still Life is its micro-analytical curiosity: Judgment seems suspended -- like the bridge that magically lights up over the Yangtze or the unlikely tightrope walker glimpsed in the movie's last shot.
01/15/08
Top CriticThese searches are not particularly suspenseful or emotionally stirring, but they're excuse enough for us to take in the breath-taking views of Three Gorges, the river and the razing of buildings along its banks.
01/18/08
Top CriticJia 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.
07/23/08
A dazzling package, filled with award-worthy cinematography and pacing.
05/08/08
The results are exhilarating, expertly choreographed and a movie to change one's view of both cinema and life.
01/17/08
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