Loneliness and alienation in contemporary China: the one and only film by a young genius who took his own life. Russian premiere as part of the retrospective programme of the Festival of Singular Films.
An Elephant Sitting Still
- Date:
- 28 Sep 2024,
13:00–17:00
- Age restrictions
- 18+
Da xiang xi di er zuo
2018, Hu Bo
China
234 minutes, Mandarin with Russian subtitles
Starring: Peng Yuchang, Zhang Yu, Wang Yuwen, Liu Congxi
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Legend has it that there is an elephant at a circus in Manchuria that stays motionless whether it is fed or provoked. Four residents of the industrialized million-dollar city of Shijiazhuang can’t forget this strange story: a young gangster responsible for the suicide of a friend; an old man whose relatives want to send him away to a nursing home; a teenager who is bullied at school and at home; and his classmate whose secret affair with the school principal is about to come to light. As they circle the gloomy, grey, aggressive city, each of the characters increasingly yearns to escape—to a place where an elephant can sit still, embodying the Buddhist attitude to the injustice of the world.
Shot from An Elephant Sitting Still, 2018
Despite its bleakness and its visual and tonal austerity, this is a film of extraordinary beauty, invention, and grace
— Jonathan Romney, Film Comment
The total alienation that fills the air, the filthy streets where the emotional war of everyone against everyone else unfolds, the fear and stress of parents and the loneliness of their children, the outbreaks of violence that tear through the fabric of this bleak, depressing reality... The panorama of modern China that Hu Bo paints in his simultaneously ascetic and epic four-hour picture seems to leave no hope—but the elephant of his film sits still despite it all, and the beauty of existence reveals itself from time to time in the geometric alignment of the mise-en-scene, or in long shots that gradually reveal to the viewer not only the characters’ thoughts, but their souls as well.
Such a sensitivity of view with an unflinching fidelity to the truth of life is a rarity in the cinema of any era, and critics quite rightly hailed Hu Bo’s debut as “one of the greatest achievements of modern cinema.” Alas, while leaving a space for hope for his characters, the young director and writer (An Elephant Sitting Still is based on his own novel), did not find it for himself: immediately after completing work on the film at the age of 29, Hu Bo took his own life.
The screening will begin with a brief speech by the curator in Russian. If you require interpretation into English, please request it at least three days in advance by emailing international@ges-2.org.
The film won the International Film Critics Award (FIPRESCI prize) at the Berlin Film Festival (2018).
