At the Gothenburg Film Festival 2019 the film which made the deepest impression on me was the Chinese film An Elephant Sitting Still of the director Bo Hu. This film has been written about both because of its obvious quality, winning the Best Feature Award at the Berlin Film Festival,  and because of the director killing himself at the age of 29 after the film was completed.

Seeing this film is a tour de force with its length of almost 4 hours and its slow development of the story in a bleak, foggy, almost ghostly world. But if you keep hanging in, spending these hours with the four main characters, it pays off richly and becomes incredibly gripping.

When the film opens we are in a small industrial town in Northern China. Life is problematic in this nihilistic environment, where selfishness abounds and people are bending under economic pressures. The film follows four main characters over the course of a single day. Each one’s life is crumbling and being emptied emotionally.

Wei Bu, a highschool student suffers of a cruel father and of being bullied at school. He runs off after pushing a school bully down a staircase. He likes a girl, Huang Ling, who lives with her single mother who has neither desire nor energy to involve herself in her. She has started an affair with the Vice Dean at school, that is being revealed that day. Yu Cheng is the older brother of the student who bullies Wei Bu. His friend has just killed himself by jumping to his death from the window of the apartment building after having found Yu Cheng in bed with his wife. Lastly, we have Wang Jin, who lives with his daughter, her husband and their little daughter. They want to move and have no place for him anymore. They want him to move to a nursing home.

All four have plenty of reasons to be sad, angry and unhappy. They are trapped in an existence from which love and affection are absent. In different ways they have heard the story of an elephant at the circus in a neighbouring city Manjhouli. The elephant sits still in his cage and does not let itself be affected by people trying to pester him. In some way, the elephant becomes a symbol of hope. Is there a way of life, in which you can stay calm and keep your dignity when the world turns against you and life runs sour? On their journey to Manjhouli they enter into each other’s orbits. Can they overcome the alienation that the sole pursuit of economic progress has led this society into?

To be honest, to see this film asks for patience and endurance. The first hour I had no idea what this film was about and how the individuals related. At that point some people started to leave the cinema. They made the wrong choice!

Rinus, Feb 2019

*Image & video posted for non commercial purposes
under 'fair use' of copyright material in recommendation of the film

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