Mountains May Depart (Jia Zhangke)

[Stay Puft]

SHAN HE GU REN (MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART)
Dir. Jia Zhangke

http://i.imgur.com/eVR2JAI.jpg

IMDb page (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3740778/)

[Stay Puft]

I thought this was absolutely lovely, even the third segment. Could have used some Lim Giong, but the soundtrack is the more important element here and it's amazing. It does to the Pet Shop Boys what Chungking Express did to the Mamas & the Papas, at least for me. I'll never be able to hear Go West again and not immediately see Zhao Tao dancing.

Speaking of, how incredible is Zhao Tao? Her performance is the best thing I've seen all year. I'm never going to shake that ending.

This is an ambitious, sweeping film - often uneven and ungainly, perhaps (I do get the criticism for the third segment) but always admirable in its goals and surprisingly powerful in the way many small moments and details manage to accumulate over time. Jia really is one of the best critics of modern China, and while I've usually preferred his docu hybrid works (Useless and 24 City are probably my favorites of his), I might rank this one up there with them. I liked it a lot more than A Touch of Sin, for example.

Jia really is bad with special effects, though, and I wish he'd just ditch that impulse. There is one short scene here involving a plane crash that uses poor visual effects, and poorly, and it sticks out like a sore thumb (I hate it more than any of the bad English acting in the third segment, I swear to god).

Regardless, this is my early favorite of 2016.

[baby doll]

Jia really is bad with special effects, though, and I wish he'd just ditch that impulse. There is one short scene here involving a plane crash that uses poor visual effects, and poorly, and it sticks out like a sore thumb (I hate it more than any of the bad English acting in the third segment, I swear to god).I find this criticism so ridiculous. That's how Chinese people talk when they speak English.

[Stay Puft]

If it wasn't clear in the first part of my post, I didn't have a problem with it. I should have put "bad" in scare quotes there I guess (I was trying to point out how the special effects actually are bad, and bother me, vs. the common criticism which I did not think was a problem for the film overall). I do get it, though, as there is a lot of uneven acting in that segment (line readings from the white guy playing Mia's ex, Yi Zhang hamming it up again, some poor dialogue in general which is no doubt partly a perception going from translated subtitles to characters actually speaking English, when it's probably more consistent than an English speaking audience is giving it credit for, who knows).

Most of the criticism seems to be pointed at the kid playing Dollar, though, but I liked him. That ending really is amazing, I've been thinking about it all week, and it wouldn't work if he couldn't sell his part, but he does.

[baby doll]

If it wasn't clear in the first part of my post, I didn't have a problem with it. I should have put "bad" in scare quotes there I guess (I was trying to point out how the special effects actually are bad, and bother me, vs. the common criticism which I did not think was a problem for the film overall). I do get it, though, as there is a lot of uneven acting in that segment (line readings from the white guy playing Mia's ex, Yi Zhang hamming it up again, some poor dialogue in general which is no doubt partly a perception going from translated subtitles to characters actually speaking English, when it's probably more consistent than an English speaking audience is giving it credit for, who knows).

Most of the criticism seems to be pointed at the kid playing Dollar, though, but I liked him. That ending really is amazing, I've been thinking about it all week, and it wouldn't work if he couldn't sell his part, but he does.With regard to Dollar in particular, it's unlikely that he would've forgotten how to speak Chinese completely as he was still receiving input from his father; negative bilingualism typically occurs when the parents stop using the language at the home altogether in order to assimilate. (With Chinese babies adopted by foreigners, there's some debate over whether this qualifies as negative bilingualism or if English should be considered their "second first language."). Also, given that he was still within the critical period for language acquisition when he arrived in Australia, he should be able to speak more or less like a native English speaker. That said, having him speak with a slight accent works to the movie's advantage as it underscores the extent to which he's neither fully Chinese nor fully western.

As for Yi Zhang "hamming it up," Chinese people are like that sometimes. It's a very shouty culture.

[Stay Puft]

underscores the extent to which he's neither fully Chinese nor fully western

Yeah, that's a good point.

[dreamdead]

As someone who quite liked Jia's A Touch of Sin (and will teach it this fall), this one was equally pleasurable. The balance that the film achieves in granting characters their own temporary spotlight (be it Tao's former flame or her father in the second part) is typical cultural building blocks for Jia's script, locating us in the centrality of that character's current afflictions until they're no longer necessary as counterpoints to other characters. Despite all that, it doesn't come off as schematic but rather as quietly controlled.

I generally love Jia's films even when they get a bit overt in their dialogue and so I also don't understand some of the early criticisms leveled at the third part. The one "google translate" line is a groaner that should be dismissed no matter the language of the viewer, but otherwise it too seemed solid. Really, the only oddity is the complacency with which everyone reacts to Zhang Jinsheng's ownership of dynamite and high caliber weaponry.

I agree that the plane crash here didn't serve much use, and the dodgy special effects undid the contemplative spirit elsewhere achieved. But it's got Tao Zhao dancing in a killer opening, and while the ending seemed a bit more perfunctorily open-ended to me than the transcendence that Stay Puft felt, it feels remarkably in line with Jia's other works...