Dong

Zhang Ke Jia - 2006
The camera here adopts a mixture of huge, long scrolling horizontal pans, on landscapes that often dwarf the figures, with closer, much more intimate shakier (though not too much) looks along bodies, paintings, people. The big long shots and takes, often with the person just in the bottom of the frame, looking away from us, at a spectacular, often misty, landscape of the dams is thus avoided from being impersonal, as the director does study people; he can use medium shots and even close-ups, can stay far away but still focus on a very particular person, their face.
As he quietly does this for the people of the dams, people one is not used (for me...) to seeing, to listening to, to let exist in front of all, the cinema opens a new path for me. Clearly a kind of development of neo-realism in its own way, at once heavily unstyled but deeply beautiful in that place, such a place.
Great colours of umbrellas and clothes, of lights. There is a certain amount of overexposing outside and underdoing in on the often unbalanced frames, but this isn't too extreme; he generally will light the insides as well.
There is very little dialogue here, generally preffering to look at the remarkable landscape, people, life. Of what there is I was rather unsure about the rather sharp and pessimistic artist. Yet, he shows kindness; it is though acts of kindness that save the world. At sixty six minutes, this is a masterwork of modern cinema, for all its slight meandering scratchiness.