Still Life

Zhang Ke Jia - 2006
Shot on DV video, this is a film that challenged my expectations of cinema. For perhaps the first time, I understood how some people, intelligent and good, could, for example, reject early neo-realism. The type of film used, frankly the weirdness of it, what I would call a kind of ugliness, though I now disagree with myself here, can be tough. The video does make it look slightly like a TV soap, as does the lack of studio lights, furnishings. And yet, perhaps partly through these means, this film can do so much.
Using long takes, as before, with long shots where the camera almost always moves, often in very clean and clear horizontals, although it can move elsewhere too. It uses some sensational shots of place, of crumbling, of dirt, of building sites; this is primarily a document of that. Yet it saves up these shots, not overwhelming; there is a lot of more personal stuff, closer, in confined rooms or spaces, usually following the 'action' through these.
With the video, this is extremely contrasty, which really unnerved me. The director chooses to light people well, a rare choice for video and, frankly, much of the modern cinema I hold dear (I'm thinking chiefly of 'Eloge De L'Amour' as an example). This made me think 'ugly'- and yet. The place is something else, off centre compostions as people watch crumbling and falling, that change.
What is acted out in front of us is just that- acted out in front of us. We're basically here for the location, but the director (or at least so his statement says) is interested in the people; and the quiet respect, kinf of affection with distance, he reserves for them is extraordinary. Cinema finding people, showing people. Yes, they can be cruel, but well... It is also frequently very funny, mild absurdist bits and bobs. The spaceship, as well as strange and oddly beautiful (though, again, 'ugly'; in most cinema this would be something called 'crappy CGI').
This film is difficult, and I coulnd't quite stick with the whole thing, more the worse for me. I like to think that I can still say though that, if we still have a modern cinema, this is one of the fisrt examples of how to do it. Get a camera, any camera; you can probably 'only' afford digital. Find a place, find people there. Make it look like it should, it is.