Visual Culture Blog

Jia Zhangke’s film ‘Still Life’ tells the story of a man in search of his daughter in the valley of the Three Gorges in China. The man has not seen his daughter for sixteen years whereas the old address of his estranged wife is the only clue to his family’s whereabouts. Crucially, the film was made in 2006, the same year that the Three Gorges Dam was completed and the water levels of the Yangtze began to rise. The man quickly discovers that his estranged wife’s house is already completely submerged by water. Throughout the film, the monumentality of the task of locating his family is signified by long and sweeping shots, aesthetically reminiscent of Romanticist paintings, with the man in the foreground and his gaze transfixed by the ever-changing landscape in the background.

The impending force of the Yangtze is emphasised in a number of shots that indicate where the water levels of the river are expected to be in the future. Streets, buildings, homes, an entire city in short, is expected to give way to the Yangtze at 156.5 meters above sea level. As the Chinese character on one building indicates, anything in the way of this mega-project is labelled ‘demolish’ (拆, chāi). It is important to note that such demolitions, often forced on tenants with little or no compensation, are one of the major sources of social instability in China. Where will the people that inhabit these buildings go? What will they do? Metaphorically speaking, what will the future of China look like. The blown out highlights and lack of visual details in a number of poignant scenes in the movie indicate that the man’s future, China’s future, is diffused, ambigious, literally not clear.

An important reoccurring theme in the film are physical injuries carried by people the man periodically comes in contact with. As the naked bodies of the workers who are relentlessly demolishing the vanishing city indicate, the viewer assumes that these injuries are incurred by the horrendous working conditions on the ground. The vulnerability of their bodies is visually emphasised by juxtaposing their bodies with a group of men wearing protective gear and gas masks as they spray poison to, ironically, eradicate the outbreak of diseases. Another scene depicts the family of a one-armed man angrily fighting for injury compensation with the manager of a demolition company. Apart from representing physical injuries, Zhangke depicts people who have become victims of social injustice and greed, constantly fighting with each other over material possessions, money and space.

In this socially tense environment, corruption and organised crime apparently blossom. One worker tells his comrades that he was attacked by a gang who forcefully took over the contract of a demolition job. Rather than originating from the falling debris of a building, it becomes evident that the injuries represented in the film originate from a rising level of crime and violence. The water levels set at 156.5 meters thus also indicate a virtual border below which, quite literally, the underworld rules.

Another related reoccurring theme is money. In one scene the man curiously compares a view of the valley with a depiction of the Three Gorges on a 10 Yuan bill. This romanticised relationship with money as a physical object is quickly subverted by various people who try to rip the man off. This allusion to trickery, or tricking people out of their money, is made at the very beginning of the film when a faux magician declares that he has successfully converted Euros into Renminbi with the shake of a hand. Another scene shows a man watching Chow Yun-Fat burning a US Dollar bill on TV. These scenes can be read as a commentary on the increasing dominance of China vis-a-vis the more ‘established’ economies of Europe and America. I would argue however that by referring to money as a vanishing trick, it is the very value of money and the people’s belief in the value of money that is being questioned here.

In ‘Still Life’, everything has a price: a ride on a motorcycle, a night in a hostel, a day’s worth of labour. Even the beating of a man, as the protagonist finds out, is duly renumerated with money. Towards the end of the film when the man has finally found his estranged wife, he also discovers that she too has a price. Forced into quasi-prostitution by poverty and debt, the man learns from his wife’s patron that he will have to pay 30.000 Yuan for her to be released. The wife’s destitute condition, imprisoned by economic exploitation, is tragically signified by a shot in which she clings on to a set of bars like a prisoner begging for her freedom.

In spite of its apparent embrace of realism and documentary aesthetics, a number of scenes in ‘Still Life’ clearly allude to the imaginary with computer-generated imagery: a woman sees an extra terrestrial object flying in the sky, a bizarre looking building takes off from the ground like a rocket. Even the collapse of a large building in the distance, as an obviously computer generated scene, sits in complete contrast with the representation of ‘reality’ in the rest of the film. Here, Zhangke applies a theatrical technique called the ‘distancing effect’ (Verfremdungseffekt) coined by the playwright Bertolt Brecht who argued that it prevents the audience from losing itself passively in the play. In other words, the representation of otherworldly and physically impossible occurrences in the film allows the viewer to question its narrative, even question the very format of the cinematic apparatus. The consequence of this effect, as Brecht argued, “leads the audience to be a consciously critical observer.”

Bertolt Brecht

The academic Ping Zhu has speculated in a recent paper that the original Chinese title of the film ‘The Good People of the Three Gorges’ [Sanxia Haoren] is, in fact, a hidden homage to Bertolt Brecht’s classic book ‘The Good Person of Szechwan’ [Der Gute Mensch von Sezuan] from 1943. There is plenty of evidence for this to be the case I would ad. In Brecht’s original play three gods visit the Chinese province Szechwan to look for a ‘good’ person in a society riddled by egoism. In the play this ‘good’ person remains illusive and the gods quickly discover that helping other people has become secondary to making a financial gain in this world. In ‘Still Life’, as signified in another otherworldly and bizarre ‘distancing effect’ scene, three men dressed as gods are not as much looking for a ‘good’ person as they are bored, sitting at a table, playing on their cell phones. In short, they have given up looking for a good person.

Taking this comparative analysis between Brecht’s ‘Good Person’ and Zhangke’s ‘Still Life’ one step further, is important to note a number of important aspects the play and the film have in common. Both function is a powerful critique of capital (lower case ‘c’) in which the body has become and exchangeable and expendable commodity in monetary terms. Both also functions as a critique of Capitalism (upper case ‘C’) in which the citizen is represented enslaved in a system of exploitation. In such a system is is difficult, if not impossible, to be a ‘good’ person. Similarly, like in Brecht’s play, the locality of the Three Gorges functions as a parable not only for the rest of China, but also, any type of economic system based on exploitation of labour.

The extent of this form of exploitation of labour is vividly illustrated in the final minutes of the film. The protagonist tells a group of workers that in the coal mines the daily pay rate is 200 Yuan. As the demolition job in the Three Gorges comes to an end, the workers are eager to join the protagonist on his next job. In spite of warning them that working in the mines is very dangerous and that many workers die every year, the group joins the protagonist the following day. In the end, the man never found his daughter. His family is substituted by a community of migrant workers who, in search of the a better life, cross from one side of China to another. This journey, as the last shot of the film indicates, is akin to a high wire act.

This blog post is an abbreviated and early version of a forthcoming journal article. As I am developing the paper, any comments or critical feedback would be highly appreciated. You can either leave a comment on this post here, or email me at marcus.bohr (at) network.rca.ac.uk for any feedback.

‘Still Life’ is available as a DVD. Other recommendations can be found in our online bookshop.

Yangtze – The Long River by Nadav Kander

Nadav Kander’s Yangtze – The Long River is a photography book, the size and weight of which matches the magnitude of the subject matter. Photographed between 2006 and 2008, Kander travelled along China’s largest river in a period of rapid transformation during the construction and completion of the Three Gorges Dam. The vast landscape photographs, too, highlight the sheer scale of a number of important tropes represented in the images: the size of the river, the millions of people living along the river, and the country’s unprecedented economic ambitions. Here, Kander’s large-format camera appears to focus on a powerful set of re-occurring themes: humongous construction projects literally towering over the landscape, men and women arrested by the rapid change around them, and bridges, many bridges, signifying the country’s leap from communism to a quasi-capitalist economic system.

Nadav Kander

Despite the apparent focus on the construction of large-scale building projects, at the centre of most photographs are people whose lives are intertwined with the river, people who work on the river, who live on the river, whose livelihood and well-being partially depends on the river. The river thus inevitably stands for much more than a natural phenomenon, but rather, it is the main artery for the allegorical body that is China. This notion of the river constituting part of a body is also emphasized in the four chapters of the book: ‘The Mouth’, ‘The Upstream’, ‘The Flooding’ and ‘The Upper Reaches’. From the hyper-modern cityscape of Shanghai, to the rural landscapes of Qinghai province, Kander documents a country that is steeped in ancient traditions yet equally re-invents itself at every bend. Precisely because of the many economic, social and political changes, Kander’s photographs are laden with the monumental task of capturing, if only briefly, an unstoppable transformation.

‘Still Life’ directed by Jia Zhangke

There is, in this metaphorically dense body of work, also an ideological dimension. The film ‘Still Life’ by Jia Zhangke highlights the fact that erecting ‘walls of stone’ upstream of the Yangtze has been a long-term vision of Mao Zedong himself. The construction and successful completion of the Three Gorges Dam is, in other words, the fulfillment of a dream that has long been an agenda for the Politbüro. The taming of the river, the site of many floods and natural disasters, thus also fulfills an important ideological function as propaganda for the communist party. The muted colours and the omnipresence of an eerie fog in many of Kander’s photographs perhaps suggest that China’s future is, quite literally, submerged in the opaque politics of the country. Nevertheless, Kander’s photographs are nonjudgmental and unsentimental as they portray one vastly changing landscape after another.

Nadav Kander

The lasting impression left by looking at Kander’s photographs is that, ultimately, the landscapes that he depicted are about to be extinct. They give way to housing projects, highways, high-speed trains, and they give way to the demands of the economy and the party. The photographs thus fulfill a deeply sociological even archeological function in documenting a world that is fading as quickly as the water levels of the Three Gorges Dam are rising.

Nadav Kander: Yangtze – The Long River is available as a book. Other recommendations can be found in our online bookshop.

Nadav Kander, Yangtze, 2010

In Nadav Kander’s photographic series ‘Yangtze, The Long River’, depicting China’s largest and culturally most important river, bridges are a re-occurring theme. In above photograph the huge but yet unfinished structure of a bridge represents China’s economic emergence. The two sides of the bridge also signifies two ideologies, communist and capitalist, the meeting point of which is yet to be discovered. And while the state is seeking for an agreeable convergence for such paradoxical ideologies, it is the people, throughout Kander’s work, that appear overwhelmed by the (state) structures they are surrounded by. Here, Kander also appears to focus on an encounter between ‘new’ and ‘old’ China: the wires hanging off the giant bridge are mirrored by the fishing lines held by the people below.

Nadav Kander, Yangtze, 2010

The structure of the bridge also evokes the proscenium arch located above a theatre stage. Following this visual allegory, the people standing below become performers to Kander’s camera further underlining the dominant trope of grandeur explored in the photographs. The Long River, as the Yangtze is called, requires structures that can cope with the unpredictability of nature. The bridge thus appears to represent the desire of the state to control nature, but also, to control its people. The most extreme form of such control can be seen in the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the largest electricity producing dam in the world. The Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky already photographed the surroundings of the Yangtze in his photographic series ‘Three Gorges Dam Project’ in 2002. While Burtynksy concentrated on the destruction of communities and the subsequent displacement of people caused by the building of the dam, Kander, on the other hand, chooses to depict a landscape that is yet to be completed.

Edward Burtynsky, Three Gorges Dam Project, 2002

Nadav Kander, Yangtze, 2010

Despite Kander’s fascination with the built environment which, in turn, vigorously expresses China’s economic might and aspirations, the photographs represent a fragile world. In above photograph, a bridge segment appears to balance precariously on a single pillar at a few hundred meters altitude. The scaffolding similarly suggests that these structures, as enormous they might be, are built on fragile ground. The folkloristic powers ascribed to the Long River threaten the very structures built by the state. It is perhaps a pessimistic interpretation of Kander’s Yangtze, that the bridging of ideologies will require more than concrete and steel.

Nadav Kander: Yangtze, The Long River is available as a book. Other recommendations can be found in our online bookshop.