Au-delà des montagnes

Director Zhangke Jia is not afraid to tackle the problems of modern China, and 'Mountains May Depart' is no exception. The film touches upon issues such as growing inequality, poor working conditions and corruption, but the central theme is the price the country is prepared to pay for its obsession with material progress.

The film is set in Fenyang, a northern coal mining city and the director's hometown. In 1999, at the eve of the new millennium, eighteen year old Tao (played by the director's wife Tao Zhao) has to choose between two suitors: the honest but ordinary coal miner Liangzi and the flashy bragger Zhang. She sees right through Zhang's bravado, but can't resist the promise of a better life, symbolized by his red Volkswagen, 'perfect for the next century'. Liangzi feels humiliated and leaves town.

Fifteen years later, Tao is well-off, but divorced and unhappy. Her seven year old son is living the good life with his father in Shanghai. Liangzi, in the mean time, is terribly ill and returns to Fenyang. Filled with remorse, Tao helps him financially but doesn't seem to be able to relate to him on an emotional basis.

Flash-forward another ten years into the future, and Tao's son is living with his father in Australia. He had to leave China, it turns out, because of anti-corruption campaigns. The boy is a spoilt and clueless brat, who refuses to speak Chinese to his father, but finds some emotional warmth with his Chinese teacher.

The first two parts of the film are excellent. Tao's moral choices, the contrast between progress and tradition, the power of money - it's all shown in a beautiful heartfelt way. The director anchors the story with recurring images, like a tall pagoda on the banks of the Yellow River, and spices it with small symbolic items like dumplings and keys. An interesting feature is the changing aspect ratio: in the first episode the screen is almost square, and it widens until it is widescreen in the last episode. Another feature is the way dialogues are filmed: repeatedly the director frames only one participant. And a third peculiarity are some high-impact scenes without a clear meaning or function in the story: a crashing military plane, a coal truck losing some of its cargo, a nervous caged tiger.

The sad thing about this movie is that the third part is very different from the first two parts, and lacks the quality of it. Not only are we introduced to different protagonists, also in this part the dialogue and acting are clumsy and unnatural, the story lacks focus and the scenes seem pointless. It's as if the director loses his golden touch when the story leaves China.

Still, in this last episode, the message is hammered home: the strive for material wealth leads to emotional poverty.

Mountains May Depart, directed by Zhangke Jia, is a very fine Chinese drama, whose timeline spans some twenty-five years from the past, to the present, to the future, representing China in the modern age and possibly where it's headed. It is something that's quite unique and interesting. Jia was also the director of a movie I saw a few years ago called A Touch of Sin, and while I remember admiring that film (which is of a considerably darker subject matter than this one), it left me feeling a little cold, while I enjoyed the experience of Mountains May Depart more.

The main character in story, who is connected in one way or another to almost every other prominent person, is a woman named Tao Zhao, played by Shen Tao. She is the heart of the film even during much of the parts she's not in, playing it with empathy and truth in her journey, a very fine performance. There are two other good performances by Yi Zhang and Jing Dong Liang, and these three main character evolve significantly through time. But the main strength is a story dealing themes of class and materialism, and the cost of progress, put together in a way worthy of these universal human subjects.

Mountains does have some issues in the final of the three acts as it becomes a little odd--odd in a way that that might have worked with different material, but doesn't quite fit with the rest of this film. Still, this is an overall fascinating and moving experience, well-acted and written, making itself very relatable and is an impressive way to view these people over time.

Finally caught up Jia's latest film in the cinema during my sojourn in China, more than one month after its national theatrical release, quite a long-run if you are familiar with China's booming but money-seeking film market, an art house feature can barely survive even for one week if attendance fails to hold up. Also notably it is his first theatrical release in China after 24 CITY (2008).

MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART forms a ternary narrative within 3 different time-span with an ever- wider Aspect Ratio (1.37:1, 1.85:1 and 2.35:1). The first chapter is in 1999, in a Northern east industrial town, on the eve of the millennium, audience is invited to participate in a love-triangle among Tao (Zhao) and her two childhood friends Jinsheng (Zhang) and Liangzi (Liang), the stability of a harmonious triangle (Chinese are too materialistic and selfish to even have the gut to attempt the enticing romanticism epitomised half-an-century ago in JULES AND JIM, 1962) disintegrates when men's possession comes to the fore. Oscillating between a colliery upstart and a destitute coal-miner, Tao's eventual choice is perfectly legitimate if put oneself in her shoes, we might most likely make the same decision - a future capitalist is far superior than a working-class honest man. Then Jia's trademark metaphorical injection of a crashing seeder becomes the harbinger of a downcast future for Tao and at the end of first chapter, the title card belatedly appears on the screen, "山河故人", its literal translation should be "mountain, river and old friend".

The second chapter fast-forwards 15 years to the present, in 2014, Liangzi returns to hometown with his wife and their child, suffering from undisclosed disease due to long-term hard labor, he is desperate to borrow money for his medical treatment, and Tao is his last resort. Divorced from Jinsheng, who has remarried and moved to Shanghai with their son Daole (homophonous to dollar), the forty-year-old Tao is a successful business woman owns a petrol company. Ironically it is also money, which has destroyed their rapport in the first place, finally mends their broken friendship, but also tragically shoves them drift farther away, leaving both a wistful aftertaste. Only so much for Liangzi, who will be left out altogether in the following story. A family funeral reunites Tao and an eight-year-old Daole (Rong) for a couple of days, but the gaping physical distance is too detrimental to shape an intimate mother-son connection, before leaving, Tao leaves him a key to remind him there will always be a home for him.

The final chapter sets in the near future, in 2025, Daole (Dong), now a college student living in Australia with Jinsheng, experiences the Oedipus complex in the most impressionable age, aggravated by the strained relationship with his father (encapsulated by the language barrier), a lost sense of belonging, and the vague memory of his birth mother, he develops a may-December romance with his Chinese teacher Mia (Chang), a middle-aged divorcée. Home is calling, but Jia leaves an open ending, it ends with Tao dancing to Pet Shop Boys' GO WEST in the snow-land, completes a formative salute to the opening dancing sequence, the same song, 26 years apart.

MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART tellingly marks that Zhangke Jia has transitioned to a new phase of filmmaking, less pungent (but not less insightful) in his social commentary but more aware of a film's holistic overview, it is also the first time in his works he creates a future scenario, although the third part is the weakest link, it is a step of trying something out of his comfort zone, where he masterly applies Sally Yeh's TAKE CARE, a Cantonese song from 1990, as a recurring motif to extract an air of undissipated melancholia. His script always finds its root in reality and excellently proffers a generous platform for its cast to portray various characters, Tao Zhao, Jia's wife and muse, delineates a demanding role ranging across almost three decades beautifully and compassionately, and Yi Zhang is the scene-stealing object of ridicule as a shallow parvenu, the excrescence of China's unbalanced development.

In a nutshell, MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART can't be estimated as the crest among Jia's filmography, but in a promising way, it takes him out of the pigeonhole as an uncompromising social observer and critic, an art-house devotee whose film is solely aiming for western recognition, and signifies his potential to concoct something more eclectic and emotionally abiding.

Jia Zhangke is a prominent figure in contemporary world cinema as one of the leading directors of the so-called sixth generation of Chinese filmmakers. He has become known for his personal films which discuss social transition in modern China through the experience of the individual. Zhangke's latest film "Mountains May Depart" (2015) continues this in an essential, if not exactly surprising, fashion. Like "A Touch of Sin" (2013) and "Still Life" (2006), the film has an episodic structure, but narrative is much more conventional and straight-forward. While there is a lot of change in narrative focalization, "Mountains May Depart" is strongly structured around the protagonist Tao, played by the director's muse Tao Zhao, whose life unfolds before us in three distinct periods: 1999, 2014, and 2025. Thus Zhangke takes a look behind, reflects on the present, and anticipates the future of the Chinese society.

As a social film, "Mountains May Depart" studies the individual in the grip of a changing world. It tackles the difficulty of communication to the extent where parents need interpreters to talk to their children. Globalization, capitalism, and the new freedom of the 21st century do not offer comfort or help, but rather appear as rootlessness, alienation, and solitude in the lives of people.

All of Zhangke's films are, more or less, about change, but in "Mountains May Depart" this theme manifests itself clearly on the level of style and narrative. Zhangke's narrative includes a modernist combination of perspectives, creating a simple complexity which is never disorienting, as different characters are followed throughout the film, enhancing a pluralist sense of multitude and change. While Zhangke's style has been known as consisting of long takes and complex camera movement, "Mountains May Depart" presents a greater variety in style. Zhangke's camera keeps a short distance to the characters, mainly on the level of the medium shot, but there are also memorable establishing extreme long shots which highlight the minuteness of the individual in a vast landscape. The camera does move a lot, though perhaps subtly, but the editing rhythm is not strikingly slow. One of the most conspicuous stylistic elements of the film is the changing aspect ratio. The first episode is shot in the letterbox 4:3 ratio, the second in the contemporary standard 16:9, and the last in the widescreen format 2.35:1. This constant widening of the aspect ratio of the image reflects not only the globalization of the Chinese society and the characters moving outside of their homeland but also a more primordial experience of change that is constant in human existence. It embraces the Heraclitean flux.

Thus Zhangke poeticizes the experience of change in a cinematic fashion; that is to say, he utilizes cinematic means to articulate a profound, existential experience of change. This he does by combining features that change (the aspect ratio, the focalizing perspective) with perpetual elements such as recurring songs ("Go West" by Pet Shop Boys), dramatic motifs (the dog, the keys), and the intimate cinematography. Like the characters, Zhangke's style and narrative seem to be searching for a red line, something that gives meaning and coherence in a world of change.

While "Mountains May Depart" might feel like a minor work in Zhange's oeuvre, it does redeem itself for a patient spectator. Like Zhangke's other films, it too looks at the contemporary Chinese society, the inevitable transition from the perspective of the individual, and modern identity in an ever-changing world. Although there certainly is sadness to all this, Zhangke's film is also quite optimistic and bright in comparison to his previous, darker film "A Touch of Sin". Mountains may depart -- the very borders of the image may broaden -- but something will endure. It is, in fact, as if higher levels of discourse were trying to find unity amidst variety: something that remains in the perpetual flux of change.

"Mountains May Depart" (aka "Shan he gu ren") is an odd experience of a movie. Why? Well, because it is on one hand a very nicely told story with three different story lines, but on the other hand the movie is excruciatingly slow paced to the point of where it tests the will to continue in the audience.

There is no doubt that director Zhangke Jia managed to pull off a very good job here in terms of bringing the story to life on the screen. And it is a very unique and beautiful story told, one that sinks in deep and sticks with you. Just a shame that it was done in such a slow and monotone pace.

The story is divided into three different segments, all of which are interwoven with one another in one or more aspects. And that is what makes the story so interesting. That, and because the story lines and subplots were interesting, and the characters portrayed in the movie were vibrant, colorful and realistic - giving the audience someone to relate to and identify with. Of course, all three stories were not equally great, and the audience will like one story better than the other. Personally, I enjoyed the first story centered on Shen Tao the most.

As for the cast, well I can say that they had indeed done a great job in the casting process and gotten some really good talents to star in the movie. I was especially impressed with Tao Zhao's performance, and Sylvia Chang also really brought something good to the movie with her performance.

While "Mountains May Depart" is without a doubt a beautiful movie, then it just lacked that particular ingredient to make the movie unique. But it is definitely well worth a viewing if you enjoy a good drama with a well-written storyline. However, keep in mind that the pacing of the movie is slow, very, very slow.