An Elephant Sitting Still

My Rating : 8/10

'An Elephant Sitting Still' - what can be said about this masterpiece? At 3 hours 50 minutes it's not something one can rush through. It requires patience and empathy from the viewer. There's no way any normal moviegoer will not find it boring and dull at times but that's where you've gotta find that right mood and environment to really appreciate this gem. This is definitely an acquired taste.

I am a huge fan of movies that deal with inner torment and involve the viewer's absolute trust and surrender. Cries and Whispers, Ida, Mouchette, Stray, The Piano Teacher, In My Father's Den are some of my favourites when it comes to this type of cinema and now 'An Elephant Sitting Still' can be added to this list as well.

Sad to know that the director is no more. R.I.P. and thank you for sending this message out to the world.

There are several reasons why you will not forget this film if you have had the patience to sit through the 4 hours of its slow running time. One of them will be to wonder if the long film was worth your while.

The director Bo Hu only made this feature film in his entire life before he committed suicide at age 29. The film is based on his book that he wrote under a pen-name. With a book and a feature film to his credit, Bo Hu evidently still felt trapped.

All the characters are innocent but nihilistic to the core caught within China's social "no-win" trap if you are not rich or have political connections. Nietzsche would have smiled at this film. There is no way out. Yet they hope optimistically for a better life. It is a curious film that ends up with stupid violent scenes as some recent award-winning films from China have. Nothing positive to take away here after 4 hours. The concept of the elephant sitting still is possibly positive, which is why four adults want to metaphorically see it. One positive takeaway in the indirect commentary on China today, rarely discussed in the media.

Recently we read a lot in the newspapers about the trade war between the US and China and the fact that it won't take long before China is the biggest economy in the World.

In "An elephant sitting still" the emphasis is not so much on the economic performance of China but on the environmental disaster that is taking place. The film is set in a dreary landscape, fog is always present and grey is the dominating colour.

There is not only an environmental disaster going on but also a social one. Most of the people we meet in this film are selfish, indifferent, corrupt and harsh. Maybe they weren't born that way, but in the society portrayed by this movie, in order to survive you can't afford te be sensitive. After finishing this movie the (debuting) director committed suicide. The direct cause was a conflict with the producer over the length of the film, but after seeing the film it is difficult to seperate his suicide from the totally dark image of Chinese society in the film.

"An elephant sitting still" is an ensemble film. We follow the lives of four main characters during one day. Contrary to for example "Magnolia" (1999, Paul Thomas Anderson) there is no redemption at a deathbed at the end of the film here. One main character compares his life with a garbage bin. The older he gets, the more garbage he collects.

In "Magnolia" there is a mythical element at the end in the form of a shower of frogs. "An elephant sitting still" has its own mythical element. At the eind of the film we hear the trumpeting of the elephant (without seeing the animal).

Up to that moment there was only talk about a circus elephant that went on strike and did nothing else than sitting in his cage. It is up to each viewer to interpret the symbolic meaning of this elephant, but in China an elephant is seen as a wise animal and the lethargy to wich he had fallen can be seen as a protest agianst the harshness of the society portrayed in the film.

For me there was clear link between the elephant in "An elephant sitting still" and the whale in "Werckmeister Harmoniak" (2000, Bela Tarr). A link that beomes even more obvious when I red (after seeing the film) that Bela Tarr was one of the guest teachers of directer Bo Hu.

This is dark, slow, atmospheric drama. There is only one scene that I do not like because of slow pace and that is (no spoilers) when movie is showing rooms from right to left and between rooms there is of course walls and I do not want to look at walls for many seconds but I did, because it is slow paced movie. With all other scenes slowness of the movie is good thing and it is one of those things that makes it great movie. Acting is perfect, I can not imagine better acting. Movie is cruel, there is no much gore and violence. It is story of characters that is cruel and after some time in the movie you do not expect any kind of kindness in the movie and when it actually happens I was pleasently surprised. It is slow, dark, drama, if you do not like these three words do not watch the movie. It is utterly fantastic movie. It is one of those movies that I will not forget, and there is no doubt that I will watch it at least one more time.

"An Elephant Sitting Still" is clearly a very personal film, a little too personal perhaps. It's a four-hour cry of anguish from a director who sadly took his own life shortly after the film was completed. No wonder then that the film has such a preoccupation with suicide.

Knowing the film's backstory makes it hard to be critical of it, but if I'm being honest I found my patience greatly tried by this one. It's misery porn at its most miserable, and it simply did not need to be so long. There's no break to the relentless drabness of it, and it's so depressing that it almost teeters into comical. After awhile, when faced with something as downbeat as this, you have no choice but to start finding it absurd that so much misery (including no fewer than three deaths) could possibly land on four interrelated people in the space of one day.

It seems heartless and pointless to criticize "An Elephant Sitting Still" for being undisciplined given the fate of its director, but that's what it is. It's an internal monologue from the perspective of someone who's clearly not well, and it teases us with the heartbreaking potential of its young filmmaker, because formally it's a very impressive movie, but it simply didn't have anything to say to me other than life is a pointless wallow in despair, which is not at all what I believe.

Grade: B