An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

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zedz
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An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#1 Post by zedz » Wed Oct 03, 2018 6:34 pm

zedz wrote:
Thu Aug 16, 2018 11:07 pm
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.

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Omensetter wrote:
Wed Oct 03, 2018 5:23 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.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Festival Circuit 2018

#2 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed Oct 03, 2018 6:40 pm

It's at direct conflict with two of our most anticipated films of the festival, so unfortunately we can't cram those 250 minutes down our gullets. But the recommendation has been placed into some part of my brain for the future - if I can stomach the entirety of Maniac on 'home video' if that's just one long film, I will certainly give this a shot.

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Re: Festival Circuit 2018

#3 Post by swo17 » Wed Oct 03, 2018 6:42 pm

I would also highly recommend it, if that makes any difference

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Re: Festival Circuit 2018

#4 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed Oct 03, 2018 6:44 pm

It makes a big difference - I am no longer interested

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Re: Festival Circuit 2018

#5 Post by swo17 » Wed Oct 03, 2018 6:45 pm

Good to know I've still got the touch

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Re: Festival Circuit 2018

#6 Post by BenoitRouilly » Tue Feb 12, 2019 5:45 pm

zedz wrote:
Wed Oct 03, 2018 6:34 pm
Omensetter wrote:
Wed Oct 03, 2018 5:23 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.
Where can I find the thread for HU Bo's An Elephant Sitting Still?
I just published a long piece on the film that is a splendid work of art to me. Link to the full piece.

Here is an excerpt :
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.

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Re: The Films of 2019

#7 Post by hearthesilence » Mon Mar 18, 2019 12:17 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.

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Re: The Films of 2019

#8 Post by BenoitRouilly » Wed Mar 20, 2019 6:47 pm

hearthesilence wrote:
Mon Mar 18, 2019 12:17 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.
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.

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Re: An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#9 Post by hearthesilence » Wed Mar 20, 2019 8:12 pm

BenoitRouilly wrote:
Wed Mar 20, 2019 6:47 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.
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.

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Re: An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#10 Post by Cde. » Wed Mar 20, 2019 8:45 pm

I have to agree with heartthesilence. As much as I admired the craft, I found it very hard to get on board with the world view being articulated in this film. Every character seems to be right on the verge of suicide, and the repetition of the idea that life is unrelentingly awful became just monotonous over four hours, so much so that it stopped registering as tragic for me.

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Re: An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#11 Post by BenoitRouilly » Thu Mar 21, 2019 8:33 am

hearthesilence wrote:
Wed Mar 20, 2019 8:12 pm
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.
You're right, Turin Horse is a good example of a film which atmosphere is pusshed to the limit of pessimism... yet it is wonderful and mesmerizing for other reasons. It's an apocalyptic story and a final chapter in Tarr's oeuvre.
An Elephant Sitting Still is less of an apocalyptic film, even if the author was in a darker place than Tarr himself (who is fundamentally a humanist).
By the way, I don't like how every review mention (often in the opening paragraph) the suicide of the auteur... As you said, it does impact the predisposition of the spectator entering the film. It's a morbid invitation to visit this visual suicide note.
But you overcame this stigma and came out enjoying the film. But I tried not to insist on the fact in my review (above), only noticing his passing at the end of production without mentionning the suicide part.

As for the characters's discourse on the state of the world... I only took it as mere words, like teenagers (in the real world) used to say "FML" for no reason, without contemplating suicide...

The shallow focus might not be his finding in the first place, but the way he uses is consistently until the end of the film is a first as far as I can tell.

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Re: An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#12 Post by diamonds » Thu Mar 21, 2019 9:28 am

An Elephant Sitting Still absolutely feels like an apocalyptic film; everything around the protagonists – their environment, their relationships – is decaying or dead. (It occupies a sort of "twin" position in my mind with First Reformed in terms of 2018 films that vividly portray contemporary apocalypse – societal and the looming environmental – via muted grey palette and relentless pessimism). I 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.

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Re: An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#13 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Mar 21, 2019 10:44 am

diamonds wrote:
Thu Mar 21, 2019 9:28 am
I 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.
I should expand or at least rephrase what I posted earlier. You're absolutely right that the failure of China's social structure is very prominent in this film, and it's been one of the richest themes in Chinese cinema over the past 20 years. As I mentioned, I can't dismiss the bleakness of the film because it does ring true - the conflicts you've pointed out don't feel contrived, they feel like a terrible reality. But I still had reservations. I don't know if using Tarr as a comparison helps to rationalize why, but the anger and pessimism from Hu Bo towards the realities around him felt much more nihilistic than Tarr's response, and from there I wondered if personal reasons (or demons) played a part - that is, the context may be political, but the visceral reaction may be more rooted in his private struggles.

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Re: An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#14 Post by dda1996a » Thu Mar 21, 2019 11:07 am

I haven't seen this yet, but from everything I've read, Bo is bleak and unrelenting. Tarr, while very bleak, always has a streak of dark humor running through his films, and his characters are usually aware of their destitute existence (which is why there are countless drunkards and dancing in his films. Having said that, I still have seen Turin Horse which might trash all I've said)

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Re: An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#15 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Mar 21, 2019 11:30 am

I thought there was some dark humor in this film (like a scene involving a badminton game in a park), but maybe that's just me because I don't think anyone else laughed once during the entire film.

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Re: An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#16 Post by dda1996a » Thu Mar 21, 2019 12:17 pm

Which doesn't have to be a criticism; I consider Haneke's Seventh Continent absolutely dour and depressing, but it's absolutely brilliant even though it crushed me.
Anyway, I should get to watching this as I've only heard ecstatic words from everyone I know who's seen this

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Re: An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#17 Post by BenoitRouilly » Thu Mar 21, 2019 2:02 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.

It is a severe criticism of Chinese society, but not as potent as say a Wang Bing (the decline of the industrialisation in West of the Tracks, the rural workers who leave their children raising themselves to go search jobs in the city in Three Sisters, the intellectual concentration camps in Man from Nowhere) or Zhang Chi (The Shaft; 2008) about the deathrate in a coal mine...
Except for the pointer to the eldery nursing home you mention, which is a precise pointer, I didn't feel like HU Bo was pointing finger at specific aspects of Chinese development (not the housing boom, not the unemployment, not the rich-poor gap. There are a few instances of stinking garbage, and the dirty river banks, but that's not specific to China.

But the fact the 4 protagonists believe in the Elephant story and wish to visit him, is a sign of hope.
SpoilerShow
There are 5 deaths in 24h (2 suicides, 1 accident, 1 dog, and one of old age), plus a gunshot wound : that's a lot for one day, and one movie (outside of Hollywood action movies), so the deck is stacked from the get go. It is difficult to overcome such piling up of bad news, especially for WEI Bu. And considering (he lost his best friend, a schoolmate, his grandma, his parents are horrible, his school is bound to be destroyed...), he's dealing with it pretty well during his journey, always on the move, trying to barter his train ticket, helping Jin, hopping on a coach...
YU Cheng, is a true nihillist, yet there is a glimpse of hope again in the scene where he saves the line cook from kitchen fire.
Cheng's ex-girlfriend seems well balanced and doesn't fall for Cheng's blame, she doesn't seem phased by their break up, and moves on. This is another character of hope in the film.

The scene with the shuttlecock (not badminton) is actually Jianzi shuttlecock, which is played with the feet (we see Bu play outside the coach with other passengers in the last shot of the film, with that very shuttlecock he stole from the group of old men). At the monkey pavillion, with Ling, he brags about his skills of juggling with his feet and Ling mocks him for hoping to earn a living, for both of them, with that.

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Re: An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#18 Post by zedz » Thu Mar 21, 2019 3:47 pm

BenoitRouilly wrote:
Thu Mar 21, 2019 2:02 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.
Agreed. I don't think it's anywhere near as pessimistic / nihilistic as people are making out, because even though the portrait of society is bleak (and, as people have noted, objectively so),
SpoilerShow
the protagonists manage to form a ramshackle community at the end of the film, having been separate for much of the running time, and that community is one that escapes the bleakness of the town, and is founded on a weird kind of hope, which is ultimately rewarded in the final shot.
I 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.

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Re: An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#19 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Mar 21, 2019 4:01 pm

zedz wrote:
Thu Mar 21, 2019 3:47 pm
I 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.

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Re: An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#20 Post by zedz » Thu Mar 21, 2019 5:21 pm

hearthesilence wrote:
Thu Mar 21, 2019 4:01 pm
zedz wrote:
Thu Mar 21, 2019 3:47 pm
I 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.
"the anger and pessimism from Hu Bo towards the realities around him felt much more nihilistic than Tarr's response, and from there I wondered if personal reasons (or demons) played a part - that is, the context may be political, but the visceral reaction may be more rooted in his private struggles."

"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.

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Re: An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#21 Post by dda1996a » Thu Mar 21, 2019 5:52 pm

zedz wrote:
Thu Mar 21, 2019 3:47 pm
I 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

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Re: An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#22 Post by Cde. » Thu Mar 21, 2019 6:17 pm

zedz wrote:
Thu Mar 21, 2019 5:21 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.
I'll defend my statement a little bit. If I'm remembering this correctly, right near the beginning,
SpoilerShow
Yu Cheng's friend immediately kills himself upon learning that his wife is sleeping with his friend. To me, this is not a natural response to upsetting news - I would expect at least some expression of anger initially. That connotes that the character had already almost given up.
At the end, there's another suicide, again coming as a surprise, from a character who had not in any way seemed suicidal.
In a film bookended by suicides, characters uniformly express the life-negating philosophy that being alive is unrelentingly bleak and harsh, and that people are disgustingly selfish. They also have a tendency to stop and stare into the distance while standing before a window or a sheer drop. Given the way the film starts and the crushing pessimism of their worldviews, is it wrong to watch them staring into the void and interpret that they might be considering suicide?
If the characters aren't on the verge of suicide, such thoughts can't be far away - they're so close to the surface here that Hu seems to be framing them as a natural response to the forces at work in this world.
Last edited by Cde. on Thu Mar 21, 2019 8:51 pm, edited 5 times in total.

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zedz
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Re: An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#23 Post by zedz » Thu Mar 21, 2019 6:24 pm

dda1996a wrote:
Thu Mar 21, 2019 5:52 pm
zedz wrote:
Thu Mar 21, 2019 3:47 pm
I 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
In both of those cases we have a lot of information about the filmmakers, a large number of works to draw upon, and copious personal statements by the filmmakers regarding their lives, their works, and the connections between them.

In the case of Hu Bo, we have one (very complex) film, and the fact of his suicide (does anybody commenting here actually know anything else about the director?), so I feel like it's a completely different matter to leap to conclusions like:

- this film portrays contemporary Chinese society as bleak because the director was suicidal, or
- this director was suicidal because he made a film about how bleak contemporary Chinese society was.

This just seems extremely reductive to me. Maybe it's because I saw the film without knowing anything about Hu or his demise, but I certainly didn't see the film as uncommonly nihilistic. Highly critical of contemporary Chinese society, sure, but no less so than A Touch of Sin, or Angels Wear White, or any number of other recent films.

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.

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Re: An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#24 Post by Cde. » Thu Mar 21, 2019 6:43 pm

zedz wrote:
Thu Mar 21, 2019 6:24 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.
It's reductive to say that a suicide was a result of one thing, as opposed to a worldview developed over time as a result of major depression.
Leaving life behind is not a natural response to interpersonal conflicts if you're not already very close to the edge. The drive to stay alive is naturally very strong.

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Re: An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)

#25 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Mar 21, 2019 7:16 pm

Hey guys, what do you call me on my couch watching this movie

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