The master chronicler of China's changing times, Jia Zhangke keeps up with Caught by the Tides, again starring his collaborator/wife, Zhao Tao, taking the lead in a silent role.
The film charts China from 2001 to the pandemic era. Culling from unused footage from his own films of the last 22 years, Jia, as always, inventively looks back and forward to tell the the story of characters swept up by the times and tides of life.
When we see Qiao Qiao (Tao) for the first time in the city of Datong, she is a hustling dancer, singer, and model in nightclubs and shopping malls in her Cleopatra wig. She is in a relationship with her manager Bin (Li Jubin), a two bit, small-time businessman.
One day, Bin texts her via mobile phone that he is moving to another province to look for business opportunities, that he will pick her up after he makes some money. His business overseeing construction takes him to The Three Gorges Dam, where cities are condemned to be demolished because of the rising water level.
Qiao Qiao decides to follow Bin, even though he doesn't reciprocate her feelings and seldom contacts her over many years. In the meantime, Bin, trying several business ventures, gets embroiled in political corruption when his boss takes money and runs off. When Qiao Qiao finally catches up with him in Fengjie, the town condemned by the rising waters with the dam being built, she finally breaks up with him using texts on the phone. The year is 2006.
We find Bin, now old and walking with a cane, taking a plane down to Guangdong Province, to visit an old-time business associate. Everyone is wearing masks and some are in hazmat suits. He came to see if there's business opportunities in the south.
But his friend is now in a hospital and because of Covid restrictions, they communicate through video chat on the smartphone. When Bin asks if there's anything he can be useful at, as he is well versed in constructions, the bedridden friend tells him that it's all about advertisement revenues off of TikTok. He manages several country bumpkin TikTok stars.
Bin goes back to Datong and finds Qiao Qiao working as a grocery clerk. Even though they wear masks and have aged significantly since they saw each other -- Tao not as much because she doesn't age -- they recognize each other, even after a lot of water under the bridge. They walk together silently as the snow falls.
Due to the Covid pandemic and restrictions, Jia couldn't shoot another film. So while looking at unused footage and b-rolls he shot over the years in various formats, he decided to incorporate them into Caught by the Tides. This experiment, in line with his formal cinematic exercises in his previous works --- the blending of fiction and documentary, tinkering with different genres and using different formats -- adds another layer to the poignancy of the film: time passing. It's not only rapidly changing technology (there are scenes shot in 360 VR camera in Tides) and landscapes; we see his actors aging right before our eyes.
Without saying much, in Tao's case, nothing at all, it's Qiao Qiao's sad smile looking at a robot greeter at the mall that tells a thousand stories. And it's much more effective than any expositional dialog. Jia finally makes a silent movie star out of his muse, who witnesses the passage of time with her sad gaze.
Dustin Chang is a freelance writer. His musings and opinions on everything cinema and beyond can be found at www.dustinchang.com