The
short life of Chinese novelist-turned-filmmaker Hu Bo recalls that of the late Marcin Wrona, except it is even more tragic. Both killed themselves before receiving
the international accolades bestowed on their final films. In the case of Hu,
it was also his first (finished under the supervision of his parents and a sponsoring
arts group), but it is quite a statement—running just a whisker under four
hours. An auspicious and heartbreaking debut, Hu’s An Elephant Sitting Still screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films, giving ironic meaning to the festival’s very name.
Arguably,
Elephant could be considered a Chinese
descendant of Dreiser’s An American
Tragedy for the way it portrays personal corruption as a symptom of
societal corruption. It is also long, but it never feels excessive. We follow
four profoundly unhappy residents of a depressed northern industrial city in a vaguely
Altman-esque way, until their paths definitively and organically converge
during the third act.
Each
is miserable in his own way. Thuggish Yang Cheng is wracked with guilt after
watching the best friend he cuckolded hurl himself to his death. Tightly wound
high schooler Wei Bu also wrestles with guilt after pushing the school’s
internet troll down a flight of stairs and into a vegetative state. Huang Ling
was one of the victims he shamed, for carrying on an affair with the school’s
married vice-principal. In contrast, elderly Wang Jin hasn’t injured anyone,
but he has little meaningful human contact, aside from occasional visits from
the son eager to consign him to a retirement home.
All
four principles become fascinated with the urban legend of an elephant in the distant
Manzhouli zoo, who has gone on strike, in the John Galt tradition, refusing to
eat or move, as a perverse way of asserting its independent agency. It is a
strange bit of apocrypha to obsess over, but it is certainly in keeping with
the multiple layers of tragedy hanging over the film.
This
is a sprawling but strangely hardscrabble epic that has a very digital look.
Nevertheless, Hu and cinematographer Fan Chao use the whole screen, capturing
some strikingly scarred urban vistas and playing games with depth of focus for
effect. Above and beyond all else, Hu and his cast create four unsparingly messy
but deeply haunted portraits of four very damaged people. They are almost like
four distinctively dysfunctional parts of a dysfunctional whole (sort of like
Jonathan Carroll’s novella Black Cocktail,
but not as bleak). Indeed, deep down, there is a scintilla of hope that human
connections can still be possible and meaningful—maybe.
Peng
Yuchang and Wang Yuwen have some TV credits on their resume, but they each have
an unaffected naturalism that makes them look and sound like they were plucked
out of provincial high school to plays analogs of their own lives. At the risk
of indulging in hyperbole, we would suggest Zhang Yu shows the intensity and
unpredictability of vintage De Niro in the hoodlum role. Yet, Liu Congxi really
anchors the film and keeps it honest as the dignified Wang Jin. He also forges
some aptly paternal chemistry with the little girl playing his granddaughter,
whose innocence is in fact quite important to the film.
