Sanxia Haoren (Still Life) poster & wallpaper
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Tao Zhao, Han Sanming, Wang Hong Wei, Li Zhubin, Xiang Haiyu ... see more see more... , Zhou Lin , Ma Lizhen , Sanming Han , Hongwei Wang

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 Y... read more read more...angtze 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

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77% liked it

3,379 ratings

Critics

89% liked it

47 critics

Unrated, 1 hr. 48 min.

Directed by: Zhang Ke Jia

Release Date: September 5, 2006

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DVD Release Date: November 25, 2008

Stats: 273 reviews

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Zhao Tao in "Still Life" (Sanxia Haoren) Zhao Tao in "Still Life" (Sanxia Haoren) Sanxia Haoren (Still Life)
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Flixster Reviews (273)

  • gator681
    February 11, 2008
    gator681
    [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 h... read moree 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]
  • Jungian
    December 7, 2008
    Jungian
    a subtle and beautiful film about the modernization, culture, and uncertain future of china. zhang ke jia is certainly making a name for himself as one of china's greatest modern filmmakers.
  • columbiatch
    December 4, 2007
    columbiatch
    The film tells two parallel stories of two people searching for their families in the vicinity of the presently-completed Three Gorges Dam project- a massive hydroelectric dam on the Yangtze River that submerged entire towns and displaced 1 million people, just another cost in th... read moree modernization of a nation. However, the loss of their people's homes serves as a background. The film charts the tolls of modernization on the family structure of the protagonists. One woman looks for her husband who she hasn't seen or talked to for 2 years because he was sent to manage the project. The film looks great, as Jia uses the grand vistas of the Three Gorges to full effect. Like his other films he uses mostly nonprofessional actors for realism. There are some curiously surreal moments which I'm not sure how they fit into the film.

    Dong

    The companion piece to Still Life is even more bizarre. It's a documentary that when seen with Still Life mocks the barrier between fiction and documentary. Jia's films always had a edgy documentary feel to them, and this complements those films perfectly.
  • pizzicatoiv
    July 5, 2007
    pizzicatoiv
    This film totally blew my mind. I came to it with no expectation and was left with the utmost respect for who is said to be one of the new great directors of mainland China. The cinematography, sound, and locations are vibrant, in constant motion. The characters are lethargic and... read more dull. This film resonates destruction and disorder throughout.

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Critic Reviews

Lisa Schwarzbaum
November 24, 2008
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 ... Full Review

G. Allen Johnson
May 9, 2008
G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle

Never has destruction looked more beautiful than the demolished buildings in Jia Zhang-ke's Still Life. Full Review

Jonathan F. Richards
April 14, 2008
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
February 22, 2008
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 glo... Full Review

Michael Phillips
February 21, 2008
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. Full Review

Logan Hill
February 11, 2008
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. Full Review

Susan Walker
January 25, 2008
Susan Walker, Toronto Star

Nothing much actually happens in Still Life, and yet one is left with a deep feeling of irrevocable loss and destructive change only heightened by the chirpy tourist patter and government promotional ... Full Review

Kamal Al-Solaylee
January 25, 2008
Kamal Al-Solaylee, Globe and Mail

Spare, motionless and silent as a still-life painting. But what [director] Jia is documenting is nothing less than a civilization in a state of flux. Chaos wouldn't be an overstatement. Full Review

Jack Mathews
January 18, 2008
Jack Mathews, New York Daily News

These searches are not particularly suspenseful or emotionally stirring, but they're excuse enough for us to take in the breath-taking views of Three Gorges, the river and the razing of buildings alon... Full Review

Manohla Dargis
January 18, 2008
Manohla Dargis, New York Times

In Still Life, the blood and the sweat run directly into the Yangtze River, where they mingle with more than a few tears.

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