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Jia Fengsen, Jia Hongshen

This award-winning Chinese film is unlike any other you've seen: a true-life story that's enacted by the real-life participants but is not a documentary in any traditional sense. Not only did the youn...( read more  read more... )g actor Jia Hongsheng (who rose to stardom in China, succumbed to heroin addiction, and alienated his family with erratic, schizoid behavior) agree to re-create this harrowing period in his life, but so did his family, as well as everyone else who appears in Quitting. His recovery is as compelling as his collapse; the efforts of his family to support his return to health are deeply moving. Director Zhang Yang (Shower) shifts styles without losing the forward momentum of this remarkable chronicle. Quitting was a sensation in China, where the struggle between traditional conformity and individual freedom grows increasingly tense, making this movie a striking social document as well as a gripping personal story. --Bret Fetzer

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83% liked it

854 ratings

R, 112 min.

Directed by: Yang Zhang (II), Zhang Yang

Release Date: September 13, 2002

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DVD Release Date: March 4, 2003

Stats: 47 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (47)

  • FangsFirst
    May 16, 2008
    FangsFirst
    I've mentioned to many people that any time I see the "Sony Pictures Classics" label I treat it akin to a Criterion label, at least in terms of the quality of the film chosen to fall under this label. I have not really been disappointed yet by this policy and as such am planning ...( read more)to continue it, and wholeheartedly recommend it to others--but with the understanding that it may or may not be the best transfer and may or may not have any special features--at all.

    The concept of this film was irresistible from the start--Zhang Yang asks Chinese actor Hongshen Jia to film his own life, especially his experience with heroin addiction, but without any actors--done purely with the help of his actual friends and family (as the back of the DVD release says, "down to the mental asylum inmates!"). This sounds like a cheap shot, like something that will end up looking amateurish, ridiculous and exploitative, but perhaps it was deliberate that Yang chose an actor who had some recognition in his home country rather than a random "nobody" to do this, so that it would be an intrusion that is expected anyway. Additionally, Hongshen's addiction is not shown in gory detail to make this a "message" movie about how bad drugs are, or to shock, disturb or horrify the audience about drug use. In point of fact, beyond a few joints, no drug use is even shown. It's not even spoken of in explicit terms by and large. We just see the effects on Hongshen himself, and on his parents and sister.

    Hongshen is a fresh-faced young actor in Chinese cinema, making his way through a handful of fairly high-profile (apparently) films before disappearing completely from the public radar--leaving behind perceptions of lost talent, an empty and talentless face that has disappeared, and questions as to who the unseen interviewer (assumed and alluded to be Yang) is even asking about when we're first introduced to Hongshen's position in his own society at large. Soon, though, it becomes a fairly frank and honest (insofar as one can really tell) recollection of Hongshen's life, abusive, introverted, troubled, depressed, filled with a desperate search for meaning, art and use in his own life, twisted and contorted by drug use that makes him seek and crave something more than he feels he is genetically or socially capable of, and pushed into arenas he is not naturally adept at.

    It's touching the way his family attempts to intervene, but we can see Hongshen's frustration with their "country" ways (Chinese film is rapidly teaching me this classism is, or was, a very large issue there) as being not totally unfair--they really don't understand the world he has brought himself into, but we can see how hard they are trying, and how easy it is for them to make mistakes with Hongshen when he has been made this volatile by his dissatisfaction and the chemical intrusion that enhances it. Sometimes we can see him trying and even succeeding at attempts to appreciate his family's efforts, and sometimes we can see why he perhaps even should be annoyed with they way they're handling things, but no one is ever portrayed as faultless victim or victimizer to blame for the woes of all.

    It's a shock when Yang begins to show us the stage set-ups of the film (which began as a stageplay) but makes sense, breaking that fourth wall (which we can of course see was never present when we pull back through it on the set to see the cross section of the apartment we previously accepted as "real" in the film context. We see that this is only a portrayal of events, thankfully something shown to us most explicitly when Hongshen finally crosses the line from troublesome, aggravating and difficult into abusive.

    An absolutely fascinating film that manages to take what appears to be a gimmick and makes it into something important, fascinating and artful.
  • habitualdamnation
    August 21, 2007
    habitualdamnation
    How lucky are we that someone had the genius to pull this off? This dude reminds me so much of this guy I know, it affected me deeply because the frustrations of existentialism are so universal. Is redemption truly possible? Very intense character study, a true gem of modern cine...( read more)ma. I know cause I'm still fightin that lard soap some way or another.
  • ripplecloud
    December 3, 2007
    ripplecloud
    In a class of its own
  • magichelmet
    August 13, 2007
    magichelmet
    I've tried to watch this on many occasions, but somehow just can't finish it.
  • davidrliu
    August 7, 2007
    davidrliu
    A unique mixture of Brechtian self-reflexivity and urban neorealism, Zhang Yang's inventive "Zuotian" ("Quitting") paints a cinematic portrait of heroin addiction in Beijing quite unlike anything done before. Actors play themselves, and a final title card explains that Hongsheng'...( read more)s story was an entirely real one - but the film, remarkably, doesn't fall into documentary tedium nor based-on-true-story melodrama. Scenes are slow and long takes plenty in Zhang Yangs trademark indie style which he advances from his acclaimed 1999 feature "Shower". Even for those not familiar with the Sixth Generation director's work, though, the genuine "Quitting" makes essential viewing.
  • zenmaster112
    June 15, 2007
    zenmaster112
    good movie about a bad actor who goes on drugs disrespects his family. His relait with his family who moves in with him and his descent into madness.
  • urbansamurai
    May 14, 2007
    urbansamurai
    wow. anyone who suffers from depression will truly relate to this movie. the fact that it is real events using the real people the events involved is just amazing.
  • devilsbrain
    February 21, 2007
    devilsbrain
    Heroin addicition plus delusions of being john lennons son...how cooler can someone get.
  • tso05001
    June 8, 2006
    tso05001
    well, if this says it's a true-life story, I shall have to see for myself and then make my thoughts known.

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Quitting Trivia

  • Based on the novel by Irvine Welsh, what film is a pitch black comedy about a group of young Scottish drug addicts whose lives are completely immersed in getting, using, or quitting heroin.   Answer »
  • In the movie "Step Up" what does Tyler have to do to make it up to Nora for quitting on her the day before?  Answer »
  • True or False: During the filming of "Manos: the Hands of Fate" the number of people working on the film steadily decreased because people kept dying or quitting.  Answer »
  • After quitting the movie business, Herschell Gordon Lewis - auteur of Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs - invented which modern-day plague?  Answer »
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