Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue (Jia Zhangke) [Archive]

Stay Puft

01-04-2021, 08:36 AM

I rented this from the TIFF website a little while ago. It's billed as the conclusion to his art trilogy, but it's been so long since Dong and Wuyong I'm not sure if this is in any way relevant (in fact, it's been so long I don't even remember anything about Dong; though I actually wrote an academic paper about Wuyong so I still have an okay memory of that one, and it lowkey remains one of my faves). This has more in common with his recent melodramas, I'd argue, more familiar and accessible but no less political, charting decades of social and economic development through intensely personal stories. This one is mostly talking heads, with a structure that often feels a little arbitrary or affected (some of the early montage chapters are incredibly brief, but some of the pure interview chapters, particularly with the second interview subject, last for quite a bit of time, but then the fourth subject has her interview routinely segmented into smaller chapters again, etc.). It felt a little rambling to me in the middle, or maybe the chapter breaks were just throwing me off, but at any rate it's not his strongest work; looking back, I can appreciate the overall shape of the film and what he's doing with e.g. the final two scenes, but moment to moment I have to admit my interest went all over the place. It's a yay, but a mild one.