Still Life (Sanxia haoren)

 

Director Jia Zhang-ke in Venice

 

 

 

STILL LIFE (Sanxia haoren)         A                                                                                      China  Hong Kong  (111 mi)  2006  d: Jia Zhang-ke

A very slow, languorous film shot entirely in high definition digital video and blown up to 35mm by Yu Lik-wai, who also shot Jia’s earlier features, that hypnotically captures the rich colors of the region along with a solemn, funereal feel throughout, sort of the exact opposite of Kiarostami’s AND LIFE GOES ON (1992), another fictionalized film that was shot in the middle of devastating destruction, the aftereffects of a deadly Iranian earthquake.  But while Kiarostami’s film searched through the ruins of destruction for any semblance of life, finding rebuilding, restoration projects everywhere that upliftingly reaffirmed one’s faith in man, Jia’s film seems to be set in the tombs, revealing instead a people in the process of demolishing an entire civilization, evicting all the residents from Fengjie, an ancient 2000 year old city, relocating them (1.5 million and still counting, while dismantling thirteen major cities) without really keeping track of where they’re heading, creating an unprecedented government-imposed upheaval on a massive scale, something that might be expected during wartime, but certainly not due to a modernization project of building the world’s largest hydroelectric dam that will eventually leave the entire city underwater.  The film resembles, to some degree, the deeply felt, existential alienation in the face of technological modernization in Antonioni’s RED DESERT (1964), as both are profound sensory experiences where mood takes precedence over any narrative, yet like Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool (1969), also made in the 60’s, Jia scripts his fictional film in the middle of this already partially submerged, real-life demolition project introducing two characters searching for missing spouses who they haven’t seen in years, a recording of memory as it is happening, with humorous references to John Woo’s A BETTER TOMORROW (1986).  In a film like this, locations are everything, as nearly every frame of the film captures the stunning mountainous beauty of the vicinity, called the Three Gorges region due to gorges spectacularly coming together along the Yangtze River, a scene depicted on the back of a ten yuan note in Chinese currency, but every frame is also a time capsule for a lost civilization, which is hauntingly still thriving before extinction as we see the people scrambling about the city streets in a bustle of activity, but there are horizontal lines affixed to tall buildings ominously showing where the water line will be in the next phase of construction, where everything under that line will be submerged in water.  In eerie fashion, everything below that line is being destroyed, while everything above that line has a tenuous hold on life, a metaphor for upward mobility in modern China, as everyone is scrambling to reach higher ground, shown in a flurry of feverish activity which may as well separate the rich from the poor, accentuating the vulnerability of impoverished residents of the region, as the poor continue to inhabit the low lying regions.   

Winner of the Golden Lion (1st place) at the Venice Film Festival in 2006, arriving in the U.S. two years later, what makes this film so unusual is the ponderous nature of the way it is filmed, full of curiosity and questions in the slow observational pans that combine intimate portraits of ordinary citizens set against this continual destruction of what used to be a vital city, literally tearing it apart brick by brick while looming off in the distance is the omnipresent stillness of this extraordinary natural landscape which is nothing short of breathtaking.   Without ever offering details or statistics, which can easily be provided by journalists, there is instead an enveloping sadness permeating through every image, as sweaty, shirtless men are paid meager wages to use sledgehammers to reduce a city to dust and rubble reminiscent of Rossellini’s post-war GERMANY YEAR ZERO (1948), an industrial wasteland of epic proportions causing the region to be perpetually enveloped in low-lying clouds, but also men whose idle time is spent smoking cigarettes or eating noodles, chatting feverishly while playing mahjong as the camera slowly shifts its attention and gazes at any number of barges floating down the river carrying commercial goods, all shown with a poetic detachment that objectively offers no point of view, yet it’s clear the collective is valued over the individual.  The implementation of market reforms from the late 70’s and early 80’s led to an ascension of capitalist entrepreneurs with political ties and nearly unlimited power to seize land for private and state projects, leading to a massive influx of migrant laborers to help fuel China’s industrial and construction boom, as reflected in Jia’s earlier film THE WORLD (2004).  Listed at #2 from Cahiers du Cinéma’s Top 10 list of the Best Pictures of 2007, using chapter headings of cigarettes, liquor, tea, and toffee, items associated with New Year’s celebrations, all perishable goods that symbolize quickly disappearing happiness to ordinary people, where there is a very calm and meditative aspect to this film, like the passing of time happening right before our eyes, representing the enormous space that exists between the two protagonists who visit Three Gorges, a space that remains throughout the film, seemingly unbridgeable, like the people lost in the landscape.  The characters inhabiting the film are all morally ambiguous, with some fueled with a chaotic energy, where they may be both victimized and also perpetrators of violence, as extorting newcomers to the region and taking advantage of their unfamiliarity appears to be a common practice.  Using diegetic sound as part of the score, the incessant pounding of hammers demolishing brick buildings is a continual backdrop, mixed with a nostalgic feel from interjected pop songs that also fade away over time, where past and present intertwine throughout the film, suggesting we are living in transient times, where what we see today will be gone tomorrow.  Jia’s film showcases his ability to provoke a re-examination of the relationship between real and fictional narratives, and also between personal memories and the collective historical record.

The magnificent opening handheld shot is a long circular pan of densely packed bodies on a ferry boat that is both meandering and meditative, slowly observing the passengers traveling down a river in a collective group collage, fusing landscape and portrait imagery, where the frenetic energy of their conversations is a stark contrast to the serenity of the water, as the camera lingers on long shots of the river and the stillness of the passing landscapes.  At the very front of the boat, isolated from the rest, sits Sanming (Han Sanming, the director’s actual coal mining cousin), a working class coal miner who comes to the city searching for his missing wife of 16 years, also a daughter that he’s never seen.  When he realizes the street where she used to live is submerged underwater, he enlists the aid of fellow citizens, eventually joining one of the demolition crews himself, just one of many shirtless low paid workers swinging sledge-hammers.  His lower class pattern of living routinely includes bartering and sharing, offering bottles of liquor to express gratitude to officials or handing out individual cigarettes to friends, where living in such claustrophobic close quarters means the concept of privacy is non-existent.  His personal business becomes the business of everyone around him, as he has to be accepted by the group before he can ever hope of succeeding in his mission.  Whether he succeeds or not remains ambiguous to the viewers, but the unusual way his story comes together is handled beautifully, with a calm understatement and a potent underlying emotional reserve, pushing specific aspects of cinematic realism, the long take, deep focus, non-professional actors, the use of real time, while offering a subjective perspective on the conditions of life.  Zhao Tao, who would become the director’s wife (married in 2012), doesn’t appear until an hour into the film, a recurring character in all Jia features since PLATFORM (2000), playing Shen Hong, a nurse, an educated, independent-minded, middle-aged women who hasn’t seen her husband in two years, meeting one of his old friends, archaeologist Dongming (Wang Hongwei, one of Jia’s classmates from the Beijing Film Academy, and the star of Jia’s XIAO WU in 1997) to ask him for help in finding her husband, whose slowly developing offscreen profile is an unusual way to introduce a character, as we discover Guo Bin (Li Zhubin) is a corrupt, hot-shot official who is actively involved in the forced eviction of stubborn residents, while his boss Ding Ya-ling is a wealthy female investor, where both have become rich through their participation of the demolition of the Three Gorges cities. Maintaining a great deal of power in the region, his hesitancy to meet with Shen Hong is understandable, as he finally comes out of hiding and meets with her against the backdrop of the Three Gorges Dam, the only time it’s shown in the film, suggesting the dam itself is the cause of the couple’s strife, a subtle hint that it is not yet fully operational, yet it is a testimony to China’s remarkable economic growth.  She discovers he’s likely having an affair with Ding, but Shen Hong’s motive for being there remains a mystery through most of the film.  Despite his elevated economic status, her manner of classic stoicism keeps him continually off guard, never knowing what to expect, as she retains the upper hand, a fact that may well explain why he left in the first place. 

Continuing in Jia’s contemplative quest to intermix the personal with the historical, he integrates a mixture of traditional Chinese painting and poetry, Cultural Revolution imagery, Canto-pop songs, as well as 1980’s and 90’s television, revealing an intersection of the real and the imagined, also the past, present, and future, which represents an evolving realist style.  His first three films took place in Shanxi province where the director was born (his parents were sent there during the Cultural Revolution, with dislocation becoming a key ingredient to his films), made without official government approval and were banned in China, described as underground projects, yet all show the shattering impact of China’s attempts to modernize in rural interior regions.  Both characters in this film are traveling from Shanxi, shown in parallel stories as each is attempting to repair broken relationships, where the future seen through differing class perspectives offers diverging possibilities, as Jia examines the disparities of class, with both protagonists representing opposite ends of the economic ladder, as Shen Hong’s husband heads the construction project, while Sanming toils in the bottom rung of the day-to-day demolition.  Accordingly, it’s easier for Shen Hong to adapt to the rapid transformations, while Sanming is more culturally isolated and completely uncomfortable with modernity, finding it easier to cling to the past than to adjust.  Through the sheer mastery of what the filmmaker is able to compress into each shot, we are constantly reminded of what’s at stake building such a mammoth project in the middle of such overwhelming, magisterial beauty, and what utter gall it takes to intentionally displace so many people from their homes and their history as a matter of public policy, literally reducing 2000 years of history to rubble before it disappears from sight altogether, taking a tremendous human gamble by betting it all on the future.  Over the past three decades, China has been transforming itself from an agricultural economy to an increasingly industrialized and urbanized country.  The film is not so much about the existential malaise of THE WORLD as it is a way to frame progress in real time, where it’s an open question whether this can stand the test of time.  Initially proposed almost 90 years ago by Sun Yat-sen in 1919, part of his “Plan to Develop Industry,” which aimed to address flooding and harness the Yangtze River’s power for national development, supported by Chinese leaders like Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, actual construction began in 1994 and was finally completed in 2012.  Shot in 2006 with work still in progress, Jia was able to film midway through the largest public works project in human history.  The consequences are enormous, both pro and con, and the idea that China, normally not known for their progressive views, would allow this most brilliantly independent of Chinese filmmakers into the region knowing the unpredictability of his artistic and political views, at least through their point of view, and yet it happened, approved by the Chinese Film Bureau and co-produced by the state-operated Shanghai Film Studio, where the result is this quietly probing, utterly realistic, yet near surreal, non-narrative essay that explores the region through visual imagery and broken marriages, where the challenge to viewers is that they will also have to decide what is worth salvaging in their own lives and what they may need to let go. 

One of the more modern images of the film is seen at an evening penthouse party on an outdoor balcony directly overlooking a giant suspension bridge that spans the river.  As it caters to the rich and powerful, Zhao Tao believes her husband could be there.  Instead another powerbroker arrives on the scene and expresses dismay that the bridge is not lit up for his VIP’s.  A quick cell phone call obtains instant results and the bridge lights up like a birthday cake, emblematic of state-of-the-art technology.  Another somewhat surreal image is an empty, gigantic structure which may have once housed building occupants, but it has long been abandoned and is left standing alone towering over a barren field where kids play.  At one point, this monstrosity of a structure simply fires up burners at the bottom and takes off, like some kind of mysterious UFO and vanishes from view, defying all known concepts of space and time.  Given the quasi-documentary aesthetic of the filmmaker, this is nothing less than shocking, while there is also an image that is almost identical to Kiarostami’s AND LIFE GOES ON, where a beautiful green landscape can be seen through a broken-down window of the earthquake rubble that reveals sheep grazing peacefully in the fields, where signs of hope can literally be seen through the ruins, with haunting Arabic music providing a profound sense of something sacred.  Jia, on the other hand, shows a married couple in a crumbling structure of a half-demolished building with a missing wall several stories high, embracing near a similar broken-down window in the ruins that overlooks the skyline of this city, when one of the tallest buildings seen off in the distance suddenly collapses.  As this is the place where Han and his ex-wife (Ma Lizhen) finally meet, he is unable to answer her queries about why he waited so long to look for her, becoming a metaphor for Han’s powerlessness in the face of China’s transformation.  Unlike Jia’s earlier films, which are about fringe characters who are aimless and adrift, defined by their nonchalance, these are stronger and more mature protagonists who are well integrated into Chinese society.  What’s unique about this filmmaker is that he makes films about ordinary people cast adrift by China’s social and economic changes, people whose lives are disrupted and have no choice but to adjust, change, and literally move on with their lives.  Over the course of five fiction films and some documentaries, Jia has risen from the initial position of chronicler of a Chinese youth without a future to a historian with a look not only at the present, but to the future.  Shot in parallel with Jia’s documentary DONG (2006), both touching on common elements and themes, blurring the boundary between fact and fiction, yet in scope and depth they venture into unchartered territory, where this is more impressionistic and elusively mysterious than any feature Jia has made to date.  One must mention the otherworldly musical score by Lim Giong on his second Jia film, formerly working with Hou Hsiao-hsien, including some irresistible sequences scored to romantic pop music songs.  The supreme image is left for the finale, however, where off in the distance a man inexplicably performs a high-wire act walking between two tall buildings that are likely targeted for demolition, another improbable balance between high and low or the sacred and the profane.

'Round Midnight

 

Director Bertrand Tavernier with actor Philippe Noiret

Tavernier with Martin Scorsese

Dexter Gordon

 

 

 

‘ROUND MIDNIGHT             B+                                                                                          USA  France  (133 mi)  1986 ‘Scope  d: Bertrand Tavernier

The swing bands used to be all straight tonics seventh chords.  And then, with the Basie band I heard Lester Young and he sounded like he came out of the blue.  Because he was playing all the color tones the sixths and the ninths and major sevenths.  You know, like Debussy and Ravel.  Then Charlie Parker came on and he began to expand and he went into elevenths and thirteenths and flat fives.  Luckily, I was going in the same direction already.  You just don’t go out and pick a style off a tree one day.  The tree is inside you growing naturally.                       —Dale Turner (Dexter Gordon)

When you have to explore every night, even the most beautiful things that you find can be the most painful.                                                                                                                                   —Ace (Bobby Hutcherson)

The first English-language film by Bertrand Tavernier, the maker of Journey Through French Cinema (Voyage à travers le cinéma français) (2016), where this is adapted from Dance of the Infidels, a 1986 book by French author and graphic designer Francis Paudras, a moving jazz memoir and biography that covers the last 8 years in the turbulent life of jazz pianist Bud Powell, who was to the piano what Charlie Parker was to the saxophone, with Tavernier, along with co-writer David Rayfiel, creating a fictionalized story combining the lives of Powell and tenor saxophonist Lester Young into a single character, an expatriate black jazz musician living in Paris during the late 1950’s, embodied by legendary tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon in the lead role, who was himself among the first influential bebop musicians.  Gordon had experience as a stage actor, appearing in the Los Angeles production of the 1959 play The Connection, made into a film by Shirley Clarke in 1961, which was about a collection of heroin-addicted jazz musicians who sat around waiting for their drug dealer, their “connection,” creating a great deal of censorship controversy at the time, yet it’s a compelling snapshot of a subculture that Gordon was familiar with, where the dialogue of the characters is interspersed with jazz music, some of which was written by Gordon.  According to Tavernier, jazz taught him the freedom of storytelling through improvisation, while also informing him that when performing a composition they didn’t write, musicians demonstrate a deep respect while simultaneously infusing it with their own unique style and personal touch.  This duality of respect for tradition and personal expression informs Tavernier’s filmmaking philosophy, where it’s ironic that it took a foreign director to do justice to jazz, a quintessential American artform, described by Roger Ebert in his TV review as a film that “creeps inside you and stays there,” Siskel & Ebert - 'Round Midnight YouTube (3:41).  Working closely with the director to ensure the film would accurately portray the jazz life, Gordon creates a unique persona that we’re not used to seeing, as he knew how musicians spoke and carried themselves, spending more than a dozen years living and performing in Europe, finding Europe in the 1960’s a much easier place to live than America, saying that he experienced less racism and greater respect for jazz musicians.  Named after a Thelonious Monk composition, the film was ranked #2 in Roger Ebert’s top films of 1986, and #9 in Gene Siskel’s top films of 1986, premiering at the Toronto Film Festival in 1986, with Gordon nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award, while the jazz music written by pianist Herbie Hancock, one of the primary architects of the post-bop sound, who also appears in the film as pianist and bandleader Eddie Wayne, won an Oscar for Best Original Score in 1987, using harmonies influenced by great French composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, beautifully rendered here, Herbie Hancock - The Peacocks YouTube (7:15), with Hancock quoted as saying, “Jazz is being in the moment.”  Gordon gives an inspired performance as the aging, self-destructive saxophonist Dale Turner, looking for a fresh start in Paris, where he is surrounded by an all-star group of young virtuoso musicians, giving the live jazz performances an authentic look and sound, where the film is light on plot, becoming more of an impressionistic mood piece, much like an extended jazz composition, even making reference to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s THE RED SHOES (1948), suggesting “The music is all that matters.  Nothing but the music.”

An interesting aspect of Francis Paudras is that he was himself an accomplished yet amateur jazz and classical pianist, befriending many of the great jazz pianists who played in Europe in the early 60’s, and it was there that Paudras found Powell, where he developed a profound friendship, becoming his caretaker and unofficial manager in Paris during the early 60’s when Powell suffered a mental and physical health crisis, moving him into his own Paris apartment as he was recovering from mental breakdowns, tuberculosis, and alcoholism.  It was during this period that he began filming Powell with a 16mm home movie camera, amassing a collection of home movies, interviews, and recordings that offer valuable insights into Powell’s life.  This intervention in his life provides the template for Tavernier’s film, where the line between reality and fiction is very thin, while his decision to cast a deliberately slowed down, world weary Dexter Gordon, who is tall and lanky at six feet five, and seems to exist on another plane than everyone else around him, was based on the director’s displeasure with actors playing roles of musicians when it was obvious they couldn’t hold the instruments correctly or play a note, where he was going for authenticity, casting mostly black musicians as actors because they were real-life musical giants, giving the film credibility it wouldn’t otherwise have.  Other films about jazz have been undercut by both an ignorance about the music and by an inability to construct a dramatic context, including directors as diverse as Martin Ritt in Paris Blues (1961), John Cassavetes in Too Late Blues (1961), Martin Scorsese in New York, New York (1977), and Francis Ford Coppola in THE COTTON CLUB (1984), films that typically express an indifference to jazz history.  Tavernier makes up for this by hiring musicians who are among the best in the business, including Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Freddie Hubbard, Ron Carter, Bobby Hutcherson, John McLaughlin, Billy Higgins, Cedar Walton, and French bassist Pierre Michelot who played with Powell, as nearly all of the music is recorded live, and we’re usually allowed to listen to it without edited interruptions, elevating the music of jazz to a central character, while he also allowed Gordon and the other musicians in the cast to collaborate on their own dialogue, with Gordon using the nickname “Lady” for all his friends, male and female, as well as his instrument, a habit attributed to Lester Young.  Considered among the best jazz films ever created, maybe the best, though Jeanne Moreau’s screen presence with the evocative film noir score by Miles Davis in Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud) (1958) is worthy of mention, while the best book on the subject may be the impressionistic stream-of-conscience novel about jazz cornetist Buddy Bolden, one of the originators of jazz, in Coming Through Slaughter by Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer and essayist Michael Ondaatje, his first published novel in 1976.  This is much better known than Tavernier’s other films simply because it had an American producer (Irwin Winkler) and much wider distribution in the U.S. through Warner Brothers.  What’s interesting about the film is the community of American artists in Paris, where their off-handed humor, interest in cooking their own food (Bobby Hutcherson is always dressed in a silk bathrobe, hilariously never leaving his hotel room, as he’s completely obsessed with spending all of his time cooking soul food), and sociable camaraderie add a lighthearted touch of humanism that starkly contrasts with the vibrant energy of the late-night music scenes.  

When Powell moved to France, it was with his girlfriend Altevia “Buttercup” Edwards, who managed his finances and his medicine, with Tavernier similarly creating a part for Sandra Reaves-Phillips as Buttercup, a sassy blues singer who is seen in the hotel greeting Turner’s arrival before appearing in the small Parisian jazz nightclub named the Blue Note, where she keeps him locked in his room until showtime and prevents them from paying him in cash, while also making sure they refuse to serve him alcohol.  But that doesn’t stop him from seeking drinks elsewhere, which is where he initially meets penniless movie poster illustrator, single father, and jazz aficionado Francis Borier (François Cluzet), looking like a young Dustin Hoffman, seen faithfully squatting down in the basement windowsill outside the club to hear, even in the pouring rain, as he hasn’t the cover charge for admittance.  Turner asks him to buy him a beer across the street, and the two become fast friends.  We’ve seen François Cluzet before in the very first Claire Denis film, Chocolat (1988), and an earlier Olivier Assayas film, Late August, Early September (Fin août, début septembre)  (1998), where his enthusiasm for Turner’s music is genuine, inviting him back to his home where he meets his impressionable young pre-teen daughter Bérangère (Gabrielle Haker), currently living separately from her mother (Christine Pascal), who is in the midst of having an affair with another man.  Their friendship forms the basis of the film, as he helps prevent the police from sending him to a sanitarium following an arrest, and helps stabilize his life.  Even knowing how easily he gives in to temptation, as drugs and alcohol are the bane of his existence, Francis eliminates the influence of his money handlers and has the club pay him directly, while also helping him stay sober by allowing him to live in his home, returning to him a sense of empowerment.  Openly embracing a subtext of racism in America, telling a flashback story that was partly derived from Lester Young’s recollections of witnessing brutal beatings and racist abuse in the army, while also drawing upon other jazz artists who came before him, the mannerisms and quiet dignity that Dexter Gordon brings to bear are all his own, powerful enough, apparently, that none other than Marlon Brando wrote to him to say that it was the first time in fifteen years that he’d learned something new about acting.  This is beautifully captured in a sequence with Lonette McKee as former lover Darcey Leigh, who takes the stage to eloquently sing a song, How Long Has This Been Going On?  YouTube (4:05), where her white gardenias connect her to Billie Holiday and Lester Young.  He eventually decides it’s time to return back home to New York, see his old friends, and re-acquaint himself with his own estranged daughter, with Martin Scorsese making a cameo appearance as his motormouth agent, Goodley.  His daughter Chan (Victoria Gabrielle Platt) is invited to a club to hear her father dedicate a melancholic song for her, Dexter Gordon - Chan's song (from the movie) YouTube (3:09), which reflects the emotional distance that still remains between them, knowing he has not been there enough in her life.  Not long afterwards Francis receives word that Turner has died, with the final scene paying tribute to his musical legacy and influence, introduced by none other than Herbie Hancock at the Théâtre Antique de Lyon, 23 'Round Midnight · Ending Scene | Remember Dale Turner YouTube (3:46), while reels of Super 8 movies are watched by Francis and his daughter, becoming an elegy to his lasting memory.