An Elephant Sitting Still

An Elephant Sitting Still (, "Dà Xiàng Xídì Érzuò") is a 2018 Chinese film written, directed and edited by Hu Bo. The first and last film of the novelist-turned-director Hu, who committed suicide soon after finishing his film on 12 October 2017 at the age of 29, it is based on a story with the same title from his 2017 novel Huge Crack. It made its world premiere in the Forum section of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival. The film had won acclaim from other established directors such as Bela Tarr, Wang Bing, Ang Lee and Gus Van Sant.

The film opened the FIRST International Film Festival in Xining.  It was released in the United Kingdom on December 14, 2018 and in the United States on March 8, 2019. Critics' reviews were highly positive.

Plot 
In the northern Chinese city of Manzhouli, it is said that there is an elephant that simply sits still and ignores the world. Manzhouli becomes an obsession for the protagonists of the film, a longed-for escape from the downward spiral in which they find themselves (the film is set in Jingxing County, Hebei province). Among them is schoolboy Wei Bu (Peng Yuchang), on the run after accidentally pushing classmate Yu Shuai down the stairs, who was bullying him previously. Wei Bu's classmate Huang Ling (Wang Yuwen) has run away from her mother and fallen for the charms of the school's deputy dean. Yu Shuai's older brother, Yu Cheng (Zhang Yu), feels responsible for the suicide of a friend after sleeping with his wife. Wang Jin (Liu Congxi) is a sprightly pensioner whose daughter and son-in-law wants to offload him onto a nursing home. In virtuoso visual compositions, the film tells the story of one single suspenseful day from dawn to dusk, when the train to Manzhouli is set to depart.

Cast   
Peng Yuchang as Wei Bu
Zhang Yu as Yu Cheng
Wang Yuwen as Huang Ling
Liu Congxi as Wang Jin
Xiang Rongdong as Deputy dean
Jing Guo as Deputy dean's wife
Guozhang Zhaoyan as Wei Bu's father
Li Suyun as Wei Bu's mother
Kong Wei as Wang Jin's son-in-law
Li Danyi as Wang Jin's daughter
Kong Yixin as Wang Jin's granddaughter
Ling Zhenghui as Li Kai
Zhang Xiaolong as Yu Shuai
Wang Ning as Huang Ling's mother

Reception 
An Elephant Sitting Still was acclaimed by film critics. Rotten Tomatoes reports 96% approval based on 46 critics, and the film also holds an 86/100 average on Metacritic. Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times wrote that although the film has "a soap opera season’s worth of romantic indiscretions, sudden deaths, unfortunate accidents, provoked and unprovoked attacks", the story "somehow never loses its sense of balance and modulation." Chang argued that the work had a consoling insight that the characters are all worth knowing despite their flaws, and lauded it as "a triumph of bold sociopolitical critique and intimate human portraiture, and a reminder that you rarely encounter the one without the other." David Ehrlich, who assigned the film an "A-" rating in IndieWire, argued that An Elephant Sitting Still "has little interest in the conventional drama of cause and effect, and its fractured structure is used to emphasize the distance between these people rather than the ties that bind them together." He characterized it as a searching film that avoids "[contriving] an empty solution for the demoralized".

Justine Smith, who awarded the film 3.5/4 stars, praised the film's portrayal of love in a system of inequality and oppression. She argued that Hu simultaneously suggests that love in a devastated system "means tethering yourself to people who have long been broken by mistreatment and inequality and who no longer have the capacity to return it", but also that love and beauty are "a constant source of minute, if not fleeting, pleasure." Smith referred to this as a "realistic" portrayal of love in such a system and billed the film's ending as "one of the greatest in contemporary film history", though also referred to the film as "overwhelmingly grey". In The New Yorker, Richard Brody lauded An Elephant Sitting Still as one of the greatest recent films, writing that Hu "builds an intricate grid of conflict-riddled connections among the movie’s main characters" and that the "volatile, roving long takes pursue the characters to the deepest corners of their explosive despair". Brody argued that Hu's "vision conveys a mighty, universal human despair." Matthew Thrift of Little White Lies praised the film as "without question one of the strongest debuts in recent memory", arguing that “the remarkable surety of Hu’s direction provides a restless momentum. It’s a film constantly in motion, tracking cat and mouse alike through the city streets. [...] Conflict is borne out of character and circumstance, rather than narrative contrivance or traditional dramatic structure.”

Conversely, Mike D'Angelo of The A.V. Club gave the work a "C+" rating. He stated that "Hu only has a couple of formal moves, which he just repeats over and over", and slammed the film's visuals as "Dardennes-style, minus the sense of bruising intimacy". D'Angelo also wrote, regarding the characters' pessimism, that "it’s hard to become emotionally invested in someone whose impossible dream is to no longer care".

Awards and nominations

References

External links  
Official website - United States 

Category:2018 films
Category:2010s drama films
Category:Chinese films
Category:Chinese drama films