Master filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke pits humanity against capitalism in ambitious drama
POINTS: 8
Winner of the Audience Award at San Sebastián and of the ICS Cannes Award for Best Actress for Tao Zhao, Mountains May Depart, the new film by Chinese master Jia Zhang-ke (Platform, Still Life, The World, A Touch of Sin) is another small gem to be treasured for long after you’ve left the theatre. The diverse and often negative effects of China’s hastened economic growth and social development are once again at the core of a story set in three different times and on two continents.
First set in Fenyang, a northern coal mining city and the director’s hometown, Mountains May Depart begins in 1999 in the eve of the new millennium as a group of people dancing happily to the Pet Shop Boys’s unmistakable Go West. It’s time for 18-year-old Tao (played by the director’s wife and muse Tao Zhao) to choose between two gentleman callers: honest but ordinary coal miner Liangzi and well-off and flashy Zhang. She knows Zhang is not that great a person, but nonetheless she falls for the promise of a better life. When Liangzi learns of Tao’s decision to stick with Zhang, he feels humiliated and leaves town. Thus begins the film’s first part.
Then, 15 years later, Tao is even richer, but divorced and discontent. Her ex-husband won custody of their seven-year-old son, who lives a comfortable life with him in Shanghai. At the same time, Liangzi is very sick and returns to Fenyang to get some money for medical treatments. It’s now time for Tao to face the man she didn’t choose once and who now needs her help. Needless to say, emotional connections will be hard to forge.
Fast-forward another 10 years, and now Tao’s son is living with his father in Australia. They had to leave China because Zhang was accused of corruption. Tao’s son, aptly named Dollar, is clueless as to what he wants to do in life, refuses to speak Chinese to his father, but eventually finds some emotional solace with his Chinese teacher, a much older woman who’s also lonely and in need of affection.
That’s all you need to know about Mountains May Depart. It may be even more than necessary. But as is the case with Jia Zhang-ke’s sometimes marvellous, other times just remarkable movies, what happens is not so important as how the director immerses viewers into the plot and, even more importantly, into the minds, souls and hearts of his characters. Identity, tradition and the need for human beings to connect are also at the core of a film permeated by melancholy and a sense of lost love and loss at large. There’s also room for regret, even when regret can’t accomplish a single thing.
A story that began with a romantic triangle back in 1999 is then transformed into a story where a side of any geometric figure is always missing. It would seem that what these characters lost, whether because they had it or because they thought they would have it, has marked them for life. And it would seem that life repeats itself in cycles, and yet what’s lost is lost for good.
Arguably Jia Zhang-ke’s most linear and accessible film so far, Mountains May Depart sometimes leads you to believe there might be a way to erase past wrongs, and yet more often than not such a way turns out to be illusory.
With a great use of ellipsis — for what the filmmaker opts not to show is equally important as what he shows — a beautiful cinematography that creates atmospheres which fully convey what the spoken word could only merely reference, a stunning performance of exceptional refinement by Tao Zhao, a superb musical score that sets mood as well and includes Go West at a very ending in a moment that redefines its use in the beginning, Mountains May Depart may not be a perfect film (the last third feels a bit awkward) but it sure is one of the most satisfying features released so far this year.
production notes
Mountains May Depart (2015). Written and directed by Jia Zhang-ke. With Tao Zhao, Zhang Yi, Liang Jin Dong, Dong Zijian, Sylvia Chang, Han Sanming. Cinematography: Yu Lik Wai. Editing: Matthieu Laclau. Running time: 126 minutes.
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