Sanxia Haoren (Still Life) (2006)

89% of critics liked it
(47 reviews)
77% of users liked it
(3,379 ratings)

Jia Zhang Ke's haunting minimalist drama Still Life (aka Sanxia Haoren) takes as its focal point the real-life construction of the Three Gorges Hydro Project and it accompanying massive dam over the Yangtze River in China (allegedly the largest manmade dam in the world) -- a project that required… More Jia Zhang Ke's haunting minimalist drama Still Life (aka Sanxia Haoren) takes as its focal point the real-life construction of the Three Gorges Hydro Project and it accompanying massive dam over the Yangtze River in China (allegedly the largest manmade dam in the world) -- a project that required engineers to flood the surrounding territories, including the two millennia-old city of Fengjie. Jia interweaves two stories in connection with the geographical transformation of that area. In the first, Han Sanming (Han Sanming), a miner from northern China, revisits the vicinity after a 16-year absence and attempts to find his wife and his adult daughter -- trying to locate them at addresses that now exist underwater. In the second story, nurse Shen Hong (Zhao Tao) also returns to the site of Fengjie and scours the area for her husband, who has been estranged from her for two years, and who, it seems, has become consumed by the work and lifestyle of an executive. The marriage, it turns out, is irreparable. Meanwhile, as a documentary-style backdrop to these stories, the old structures of Fengjie are continually destroyed -- walls brought to crumbling heaps, towers blown to bits -- and new, makeshift structures installed as replacements. The film thus becomes a sad-eyed meditation on the nature of social change and progress, but it is one that requires the audience to extract these deeper themes and tropes on its own, via inference and deduction. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 48 min.
Directed By: Zhang Ke Jia
Written By: Jia Zhang Ke
Genres: Drama, Romance

In Theaters: Sep 5, 2006 Wide
On DVD: Nov 25, 2008
Studio: New Yorker Films

Critic Reviews

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
More than a million people have been displaced in central China in the cause of generating electrical power to meet the needs of the future; Jia's flowing river of a picture washes over a few of them as they adjust to life's currents in the present.
G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle
Never has destruction looked more beautiful than the demolished buildings in Jia Zhang-ke's Still Life.
Jonathan F. Richards, Film.com
Writer-director Jia Zhangke is a keen observer of the effects of the break-neck modernization that is stampeding China toward a future that no one can predict, control, or contain.
Bill Stamets, Chicago Sun-Times
Jia Zhang-ke is a new auteur making his mark. Embraced abroad on the international festival circuit, if less welcome on screens in China, this writer-director works in a genre that could be called globalist.
Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
Still Life is the first great film of the year. It's beautiful but so much more--full of subtle feeling, framed by a monstrous, eroding landscape.
Logan Hill, New York Magazine
More than any other director, the extraordinarily gifted Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke has a talent for locating the future in the present day.
Jeffrey Chen, ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Observant and acts as a record of the inevitability of change, even ones mandated not by nature but by the government.
Christopher Long, Movie Metropolis
Playful and moody, naturalistic and surreal, Still Life is a film not to be missed.
Patrick Peters, Empire Magazine
The despondent tone is lifted by moments of hope and, surprisingly, hilarity.
Liz Braun, Jam! Movies
Still Life is a moody undertaking, with little action but plenty going on.
Wendy Ide, Times [UK]
Jia Zhang Ke is perhaps the most distinctive director working in China now.
Chris Cabin, Filmcritic.com
Still Life is all about these common people existing in a world that seems more and more unreal
Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly
Simply one of the best films of last year, this year, or any year likely to come.
Ted Fry, Seattle Times
An extraordinary glimpse into the psychology, subtext and austere reality of modern Chinese culture.
Bill White, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Director Jia Zhang-ke sees the urbanization of China through the eyes of the relocated laborers.
Jeff Vice, Deseret News, Salt Lake City
Jia has taken supposedly naturalistic approach to filmmaking and, here at least, uses amateur actors and other fresh faces. A few of these newcomers are stiff and appear to be uncomfortable on camera.
Sean Means, Salt Lake Tribune
The rising waters of the Yangtze become a melancholy backdrop for a diaspora in which people try to establish some connection in a place where their old lives literally are being washed away.
Stan Hall, Oregonian
Richly rewarding to those willing to roll with its deliberate rhythms.
Marty Mapes, Movie Habit
Jia chose a great setting, but don't give him too much credit
Amber Wilkinson, Eye for Film
As much an exploration of emotional and cultural problems in modern day China, as it is the tale of one man's lost love.

Read all 20 critic reviews

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Walter M

[font=Century Gothic]"Still Life" starts with Han(Han Sanming) arriving in Fengjie as it is in the process of being prepared to be flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. He is looking for the wife he has not seen in sixteen years, desperately wanting to see the… More
[font=Century Gothic]"Still Life" starts with Han(Han Sanming) arriving in Fengjie as it is in the process of being prepared to be flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. He is looking for the wife he has not seen in sixteen years, desperately wanting to see the daughter he has never known. But he receives news from her brother that she is currently out of town and the best thing to do is just to wait for her. In the interim, Han finds some demolition work.[/font] [font=Century Gothic][/font] [font=Century Gothic]In the meantime, Shen Hong(Zhao Tao) also arrives in town looking for her husband who she has not heard from in two years.[/font] [font=Century Gothic][/font] [font=Century Gothic]The central theme of "Still Life" is the price of progress. The bitter irony of the Three Gorges Dam is that it is likely to help other parts of the country more than the people who are being dislocated. Fengjie is definitely a fascinating setting for a movie and a good starting place for an exploration of forced mobility in Chinese society. So, while the movie handles the social criticism well, the drama is handled less successfully, as neither storyline is developed as well as they could have been.[/font]