Sanxia Haoren (Still Life)

It takes something to tell the story of a dam that has displaced, by certain estimates, 1.3 million people, through stories of just two of them.

But Sanxia Haoren or Still Life is more than about China’s Three Gorges Dam, or industrialisation, or modernisation, or its implications for individuals, or its consequences on society. Yes, these are all parts of Still Life, but like life, the film (in Mandarin) is more than this.

In the way its characters move and its camera spans, over scenes where dampness hangs over everything, there is a general resignation. This is a generation whose life is being swept aside by forces beyond its control and it has chosen to step aside, gently. Here are people for whom this is the only way of life, the only truth, over and beyond a marriage or family.

They are not sad, they are just not happy. Few wear clothes, others don similar Mao jackets. They have the same cigarette brands, drink the same wine, have the same food and enjoy the same toffee. They go where work takes them, live in ramshackle houses or on boats when these are put up for demolition. In a stunning piece of irony, though, each carries a cell phone. In a time and space where few things, least their address, are fixed, this is their only hold on permanence.

However, over and above, the human spirit triumphs. The little they have is shared, be it cigarettes, a meal or the odd toffee. And in one last scene, it rises above all aroud it — the clouds, the mountains, the crumbling and half-demolished structures and above all, the water, the ever-present water.

For the first time in the film, Sanming (who came looking for a town, home and love, which have all been swept away by the dam) turns back and smiles.

shalini.langerexpressindia.com