By JOSÉ GERALDO COUTO*

Commentary on the film directed by Jia Zhangke, currently showing in theaters

Chinese Jia Zhangke is one of the great authors of 21st century cinema, and Carried away by the tides, is his most ambitious and experimental film. To get to know this unique artist and his relationship with the history and culture of his country, there is nothing better than the documentary Jia Zhangke, a man from Fenyang (2014), by Walter Salles, which is also coming to Brazilian cinemas. They are two essential and complementary works.

Carried away by the tides (2024) follows a structure sui generis to cover Chinese history over the last quarter of a century and, at the same time, tell a story of love, or heartbreak, between a man and a woman.

The epic and the lyrical

Articulating small excerpts from their own films, such as Unknown pleasures (2002) in search of life (2006) and Love to the ashes (2018), among others, and half-documentary, half-fictional scenes filmed without a defined purpose over the decades, the filmmaker managed the feat of constructing a logical narrative that unites the epic, the dramatic and the lyrical.

The woman who crosses this heterogeneous panel is Qiaoqiao (Tao Zhao, the director's wife since 2012), a working-class girl who makes a living as a singer, dancer, model for a clothing store, supermarket cashier, etc. The man she loves and tries to follow is the streetwise Guo Bin (Zhubin Li), alternately involved with nightclubs, construction, loans and all sorts of activities bordering on fraud and crime.

Around these two characters who sometimes touch and sometimes follow different paths, we see the dizzying history of China unfold in recent decades: the violent opening to the market economy and Western culture, the decline of traditional industry, the construction of the gigantic Three Gorges hydroelectric dam, the forced displacement of millions of people, the growing crime rate among young people, the prodigious technological advances, the trauma of the Covid pandemic, the TikTok craze.

As is often the case in the director's films, the environment adds nuance and depth to the characters' actions. Throughout the first half of the film, the film is dominated by scenes of ruins: abandoned factories, demolition debris, empty warehouses, and desolate neighborhoods. From there, we move on to the majestic landscape of the mountains on the banks of the Yangtze River, where the construction of the Three Gorges hydroelectric dam will submerge entire cities. We follow the dismantling of one of them, Fengjie, and the exodus of a large part of its population.

Finally, in recent years, life in a modern city has become highly technological and computerized – the same Datong that, at the beginning of the film, seemed like a devastated setting. One of the most striking scenes in this part is when Qiaoqiao is confronted in a shopping mall by a robot who comically tries to interact with her. It hardly seems that we are in the same city where, at the beginning of the film, working women gathered in a kitchen to sing excerpts from popular operas and patriotic hymns.

Loneliness in mass society

Apparently, Carried away by the tides was not conceived back then with a defined purpose. It was from fragments filmed over time with different objectives, and often without a conscious purpose, that Jia Zhangke stitched together his narrative – proving, for the umpteenth time, that editing is the cinematic procedure par excellence.

This poetics of rubble in a certain way formally embodies what China has experienced in recent decades: implosion and reconstruction. At the same time, by incorporating chance and unforeseen events into its own material, it gives breath, vitality and freshness to the drama of the protagonists. Background and figure mirror each other.

Few artists are as capable as Jia Zhangke of portraying the irreducible loneliness of the individual in the midst of the mass society of our time. The culmination of this, in my view, is the sublime final sequence, which begins with a silent, fortuitous reunion and ends with a collective nighttime run through the snowy streets of Datong.

One detail that, hypnotized by Jia Zhangke's art, many viewers may not notice: the protagonist Qiaoqiao does not utter a single word throughout the entire film.

A man from Fenyang

Walter Salles' documentary about Jia Zhangke beautifully reveals how much the Chinese director's cinema is rooted in his life experience and his complex and painful relationship with his country.

During a visit to the neighborhood where he spent his childhood and adolescence, in Fenyang, Jia comments on the changes the place has undergone and, at the same time, recalls his family biography, such as the fact that his father, a teacher, always lived under political surveillance, since during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution all intellectual activity was suspect and Western culture was seen as decadent and pernicious.

State authoritarianism was also responsible for the banning of the director's first films, such as pickpocket craftsman (1997) and Consumer Relations Platform – (2000), before he gained international renown. In the documentary, we see excerpts from these early films, which record the marginalized lives of a handful of young people – many of them neighborhood friends of the director – interspersed with Jia's walks around the city, lectures to students, and testimonies from collaborators (director of photography, editor, actor).

Led by Walter Salles together with the French critic Jean-Michel Frodon, also a co-writer, these multiple conversations constitute a precious guide to understanding Jia Zhangke's cinema and its relationship with this enigmatic and disconcerting giant that is contemporary China.

*Jose Geraldo Couto is a film critic. Author, among other books, of André Breton (Brasiliense).

Originally published on Moreira Salles Institute's cinema blog.

Reference

Carried away by the tides (Feng liu yi dai).
China, 2024, 111 minutes.
Directed by: Jia Zhangke.
Cast: Zhao Tao, Zhubin Li, Pan Jianlin.

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