(dir. Jia Zhangke, 2006)
Note: Originally written for the course Temporality: Word And Image at The Evergreen State College.
At the very beginning of Jie Zhangke’s 2006 film Still Life, after a few moments of opening credits rolling by, there is a single, uninterrupted shot that moves horizontally across the screen, visually sweeping the entire top floor of a boat that is transporting a sizable group of people. They are playing cards, drinking, betting, smoking, simply relaxing as they go from one place, unnamed, to another, also yet to be named. There is no dialogue in this shot, as it is a purely observational one, allowing us to see contemporary Chinese life at rest, traveling by means that most people in America don’t take to go intermediate distances; a packed, rusting boat. It’s a mundane scene, and one that appears dreary, cramped, but the folks onboard seem to be having a great time simply being alive, being still.
For a film called Still Life, there is movement throughout, whether it is of the protagonists searching for their estranged family in the region of China they have come to visit, or whether it is the much slower, gradual demolition of various structures and buildings in the region. This tectonic-like movement is, conversely, hinting at a kind of life brought to a stand-still, but rather, the receptacles and mediums for life to exist through; even the boat at the very beginning looks still, appearing to be an alleyway with people commingling in it, and not a moving structural unit.
There is something to be said about the film taking place on a river, a place known for its constant movement going on ad infinitum. However, There are numerous shots in Still Life where we are looking at an image that is indicative of still life painting or photography, with its lack of movement and realist edge. I’m reminded of two shots from two separate films; 1) Vagabond, dir. Agnes Varda, 1985 and 2) Young Mister Lincoln, dir. John Ford, 1939. In the first, there is a shot soon before Mona’s death wherein she falls in a ditch, and she lays there momentarily, before resigning herself to rest, closing her eyes, allowing death and its penchant stillness to come into her. Similarly, in Young Mister Lincoln, there is a shot of Lincoln himself standing still, solemnly, in a cemetery meditating on a tombstone of someone close to him. The camera stands still and focused on him for quite some time, the only differentiating factor between this and an image of still life being the river running behind him in the immediate distance, barely noticeable. A connection can therefore be made between rivers and death, the change of living state being an inevitable change such as that of a river running its course forever. The region explored by our protagonists in Still Life is disintegrating slowly, an inevitable factor, the only other inevitability being the running of the river that the film takes place on. The stillness of death, and the movement of life, in both reality and film, therefore, are inherently and symbolically related.