An Elephant Sitting Still
大象席地而坐
China, 2018, colour, 16:9, 233 mins.
Director: Hu Bo 胡波.
Rating: 7/10.
Four-hour web of interwoven stories in a dreary Mainland town is surprisingly involving, if still needlessly long.
STORY
Jingxing county, Shijiazhuang municipality, Hebei province, northern China, the present day, winter. In a block of high-rise flats in an economically depressed town, petty criminal Yu Cheng (Zhang Yu) has been sleeping with the wife (Wang Xueyang) of a friend (Wang Chaobei). He tells her a story he heard about a zoo in Manzhouli, Inner Mongolia province, where an elephant just sits, not responding to people hitting him. As Yu Cheng leaves, she tells him not to come in the evening. Elsewhere in the building, 16-year-old Wei Bu (Peng Yuchang) wakes up, is nagged by his father (Zhao Yanguozhang) who’s in a wheelchair with a leg cast, and leaves for school with his mother (Li Suyun) who’s off to work. In another flat is the retired, 60-year-old Wang Jin (Li Congxi), whose daughter (Li Danyi), son-in-law (Kong Wei) and grand-daughter (Kong Yixin) live with him; the son-in-law tries to persuade him to move into an old people’s home to give them more room but Wang Jin says he wouldn’t be able to take his dog with him. Wei Bu meets high-school friend Li Kai (Ling Zhenghui), who shows him a gun he’s stolen from his father; Wei Bu then shows Li Kai a cosh he’s made, just like one his policeman father used, which leaves no marks. As Yu Cheng is leaving his lover’s flat, her husband arrives to pick up something, sees Yu Cheng, and throws himself out of the window; Yu Cheng makes a run for it. Elsewhere in a flat, in which the toilet is broken, high-school pupil Huang Ling (Wang Yuwen) lives with her mother (Wang Ning). At school Li Kai is bullied by Yu Shuai (Zhang Xiaolong) who thinks Li Kai stole his mobile; Li Kai denies it. Then Wei Bu hears that the high school, dubbed “the worst in the city”, is to be demolished and its pupils merged with those of a new school across town. Wei Bu chats with schoolmate Huang Ling, whom he likes, but she says she’s not free to meet that evening. Meanwhile, Wang Jin hears from a friend that the retirement home is actually okay. Yu Cheng’s lover tells him her husband committed suicide not because of Yu Cheng but because he couldn’t afford the flat she was pressing him to buy; she emotionally tells Yu Cheng that he was her husband’s only friend. Wei Bu and Li Kai bump into bully Yu Shuai again and in a scuffle Yu Shuai falls down the stairs, unconscious. Wei Bu and Li Kai are aware that Yu Shuai has a dangerous elder brother, Yu Cheng. Wei Bu decides to make a run for it but, while collecting some stuff from home, finds his father has already stolen his savings from under his mattress. Wei Bu goes to stay with his grandmother but finds her dead; he calls his aunt (Qi Qi) and uncle (Liu Jianmin) to tell them. On the run from Yu Cheng and his gang, Wei Bu goes to borrow some money from Wang Jin, who’s upset because his dog has just been bitten to death by another dog; however, Wang Jin finally lends some money to Wei Bu, who says he’s going to stay in Manzhouli, to see the elephant there. Meanwhile, Yu Cheng meets the mother (He Miaomiao) of his late friend; she doesn’t know Yu Cheng was in the flat at the time of her son’s suicide. Huang Ling manages secretly to meet Wei Bu, who asks her to go with him to Manzhouli; he tells her he gave Yu Shuai a shove when the latter said Wei Bu’s father lost his job for taking bribes. Huang Ling tells Wei Bu she can’t go with him to Manzhouli. In fact, she’s having a relationship with Li, the school’s deputy head (Dong Xiangrong) who’s separated from his wife (Guo Jing) – something Wei Bu finds out just as he’s leaving. Meanwhile, Yu Cheng’s lover dumps him. Suddenly, Huang Ling and Li find their relationship is all over social media and his teaching career is therefore ruined. Li Kai tells Wei Bu that he did steal Yu Shuai’s phone, which contained a lot of compromising material, including Huang Ling and the school’s deputy head in a karaoke bar together; he stole the phone because it also contained material about himself. At dusk, as Wei Bu tries to leave the city for Manzhouli, he’s confronted by Yu Cheng and his gang near the railway station with the news that Yu Shuai has just died in hospital.
REVIEW
Four hours long, shot in muted colours, and seemingly constructed in a random way as it criss-crosses between everyday characters’ lives in a dreary town in northern China, An Elephant Sitting Still 大象席地而坐 would seem on paper to be the ultimate in somniferous, self-indulgent artiness. In practice, it’s nothing of the kind. Though it is needlessly long, and would lose very little by being half the length, it’s never boring for a moment and has characters and storylines that develop and interlock in an involving way – to the point where the technique of long, hand-held takes doesn’t draw attention to itself as much as in so many lesser auteurist movies. World premiered in the Forum section of the Berlinale in Feb 2018, Elephant went on to multiple other festivals but has still not been commercially released in the Mainland. However, on 21 Jul 2018 it did open the First Film Festival, in Xining, Qinghai province, at whose financing forum in 2016 it had initially found a producer.
The film is unavoidably coloured by the tragic fate of its director, Shandong-born Hu Bo 胡波, a Beijing Film Academy graduate who’d previously made several shorts (including Night Runner 夜奔, 2014, and Man in the Well 井里的人, 2016) as well as various writings under the pen name Hu Qian 胡迁 (including the short-story collection Huge Crack 大裂, 2017). On 12 Oct 2017, during the final stages of editing, Hu, then 29, hanged himself in the stairwell of a residential building in the eastern suburbs of Beijing. On his computer was a document in which he talked of constant pressure from the producers, who also wanted him to cut the running time in half. His first full-length novel, Bullfrog 牛蛙, written two years earlier, was published the same month. Four months later Hu’s original cut premiered in Berlin, with his mother in attendance.
Initially known as 金羊毛 (“The Golden Fleece”) and, after securing finance, as 爱在樱花盛开时 (“Love in the Time of Cherry Blossom”), Elephant started shooting in Feb 2017, with established director Wang Xiaoshuai 王小帅 as creative producer 监制. The final Chinese title, which literally means “Elephant Sitting on the Ground”, comes from Hu’s short story that inspired the script: published in the collection Huge Crack (see cover, left), it focuses on just a single character, the petty gangster Yu Cheng, and his fate when visiting said elephant in a zoo cage. Ironically, in the film Yu Cheng is the only protagonist who doesn’t end up going to see the elephant; but the film itself starts with him, as he relates the story of the elephant to his lover, who also happens to be his best friend’s wife. After a sudden, shocking incident that psychologically scars Yu Cheng, the film then fans out to include three other protagonists – teenage high-schooler Wei Bu who has a fractious relationship with his grumpy father, retiree Wang Jin whose family wants to evict him from his own flat, and the high-schooler’s wannabe girlfriend Huang Ling, who is actually having an affair with the deputy headmaster.
Though it’s not absolutely clear, these other characters all appear to live in the same dreary high-rise as Yu Cheng’s lover, and come with other supporting characters attached. Wei Bu has a classmate who’s bullied by Yu Cheng’s younger brother, who in turn is seriously injured during a later scuffle; Huang Ling has problems of her own at home and at school; and Wang Jin, apart from his pushy family that wants to plonk him in an old people’s home, has a problem with his beloved dog. Yu Cheng and Wei Bu, who finally confront each other at the end, are bound by more than they think: despite his gang-leader front, Yu Cheng is actually ashamed of what he’s become and knows that his younger brother is a worthless piece of shit, and Wei Bu, with all his anger and resentment, has the makings of a future Yu Cheng. With so many of the younger people coming from troubled families, the only one who seems to have an inner calm is the retiree, Wang Jin, who at least has a bond with his grand-daughter.
It all sounds like another artsy, depressing portrait of everyday Mainland life in an ugly industrial town; but the occasional flashes of humour, the way in which the threads gradually come together and then end on a surprising message of hope (the “golden fleece” of the script’s original title), and Hu’s subtly choreographed (rather than random) long takes – these all make the time pass quickly, with brief nudges from the music by Hua Lun 花伦 (either fretted or repetitive figures). The film’s superficial theme is that life is all agony and problems, wherever you are or wherever you move to; but the underlying theme is very much the opposite. The attractive performances are also a big help, especially by boyish-looking Peng Yuchang 彭昱畅 (Our Shining Days 闪光少女, 2017, and the future Bath Buddy 沐浴之王, 2020), actually 22 at the time; Zhang Yu 章宇 (Dying to Survive 我不是药神, 2018, and the future Back to the Wharf 风平浪静, 2020) as the conflicted gang leader; veteran actor/producer Li Congxi 李从喜 (Devils on the Doorstep 鬼子来了, 2000) as the mellow retiree; and actress Wang Yuwen 王玉雯 (Nice to Meet You 遇见你真好, 2018), then 19 and at the start of her film career after TV roles, as the oh-so-grown-up high-schooler.
Working against the film is the annoying way in which Hu feeds information to the audience: it’s an hour before the names of several lead characters are divulged, hardly helping the viewers’ identification with them. And Hu’s habit of shooting over the shoulder of a character and keeping the face of the addressee out of focus also becomes an irritating affectation. On a pettier level, for a film that’s set across roughly 18 hours, from morning until late evening, the sun seems to go down extremely late for a winter’s day in northern China. So, yes, the film could be half the length without losing a lot, but it is also acceptable at its present length. Its characters develop and reveal themselves, and the film does convey a real sense of everyday Mainland life – the lack of any social etiquette to accompany the new prosperity, the anger and petty violence just beneath the surface, and the casual litigiousness – that enhances the drama on screen without rubbing the audience’s noses in it.
CREDITS
Produced by Beijing Dongchun Films (CN).
Script: Hu Bo. Photography: Fan Chao. Editing: Hu Bo. Music: Hua Lun. Art direction: Xie Lijia. Costumes: Deng Qiying. Sound: Bai Ruizhou, Lou Kun, Fan Wenrui. Visual effects: Feng Jitao.
Cast: Peng Yuchang (Wei Bu), Wang Yuwen (Huang Ling), Zhang Yu (Yu Cheng), Li Congxi (Wang Jin), Ling Zhenghui (Li Kai), Zhang Xiaolong (Yu Shuai, Yu Cheng’s younger brother), Li Danyi (Wang Jin’s daughter), Kong Wei (Wang Jin’s son-in-law), Kong Yixin (Wang Jin’s grand-daughter), Wang Chaobei (Yu Cheng’s friend), Wang Xueyang (wife of Yu Cheng’s friend), Zhu Yanmanzi (Yu Cheng’s girlfriend), Zhao Yanguozhang (Wei Bu’s father), Li Suyun (Wei Bu’s mother), Huang Ximan (white dog’s female owner), Li Qing (white dog’s male owner), He Miaomiao (mother of Yu Cheng’s friend), Li Binyuan (railway ticket tout), Shun Zi (Yu Cheng’s mother), Guo Jing (wife of high-school deputy head), Dong Xiangrong (Li, high-school deputy head), Zhang Shuai, Zhou Yinglong (Yu Cheng’s gang members), Zhao Weimin, Hao Shimin (Yu Shuai’s gang members), Liu Jianmin (Wei Bu’s uncle), Qi Qi (Wei Bu’s aunt), Huang Gang (Yu Cheng’s father), Wang Longlong (ticket tout’s accomplice), Wang Ning (Huang Ling’s mother).
Premiere: Berlin Film Festival (Forum), 16 Feb 2018.
Release: China, tba.