Holding Your Breath - 'An Elephant Sitting Still'

“The damn thing just sits.  Perhaps it’s sick of getting poked, perhaps it just likes sitting there.  Now, its stubbornness has attracted quite the crowd. Those who visit throw food at it, but the elephant no longer cares.”

If you are planning to take in a film that has a running time of around four hours, you are going to want to make sure that it is worth your while.  And that inevitably involves finding out a little bit about the director.  An Elephant Sitting Still is the work of Hu Bo, and he committed suicide shortly after completing it.  To say that this circumstance tempers the way that you view the film is an understatement.  The gravity of this fact grips you like a vice.  It is a black hole: nothing within the film's narrative can escape it.  Despite this – or maybe because of it … I can't quite decide – what remains is an astonishing piece of cinema.    

An Elephant Sitting Still (2018)

The film begins with an off-screen voice telling the story of an elephant that resides in a circus in the northern Chinese city of Manzhouli.  This elephant does nothing.  It sits still and ignores the world around it.  This anecdote becomes an unlikely quest, a potential escape, for the collection of unhappy characters that frequent the story (indeed, the working title of the film 'The Golden Fleece' is a useful way of regarding the elephant).  We have Yu Cheng, a small-time gangster who has slept with the wife of his best friend, and then watches on as that friend throws himself to his death.  There is the schoolboy Wei Bu who has gone into hiding after accidentally pushing Yu Cheng's bully of a brother down a flight of stairs.  There is Wei Bei's school crush Huang Ling who, wanting to escape an alcoholic mother, is having an affair with the deputy dean of the local school.  And there is Wang Jin, a pensioner who is about to be evicted from his own home by his daughter and son-in-law. 

(left to right): Huang Ling, Wang Jin, Yu Cheng, and Wei Bei.

The film takes place over a single eventful day, following each of the characters around, as they attempt to evaluate, or more exactly attempt to ignore, their miserable predicaments.  The camera is key.  It lingers in a way that is both mesmerising and obscene.  The death of Yu Cheng's best friend is illustrative of the director's methodology.  Yu Cheng is caught red-handed before he can leave the bedroom of his lover.  The camera's focus is directed at Yu Cheng, never once deviating from his face.  The shape of the cuckolded husband is an indistinct blur in the foreground.  Suddenly, the husband rushes to the right and a sickening thud tells us that he has flung himself to his death.  The camera still does not leave Yu Cheng's face.  A slight wince is the only display of emotion that is registered.  A few minutes later we see Yu Cheng rushing towards the body, blurred and indistinct, in the background.  He takes a glance and then flees.  Likewise, a later scene has the Deputy Dean telling a story to his schoolgirl lover Huang Ling about how, when he was much younger, a friend of his had tortured a cat to its death.  According to the Deputy Dean this is just how the world is, cruel and sadistic. But the Deputy Dean also tells Huang Ling that he actually enjoyed it.  Again, as this story unfolds, the camera stays on just one person.  The Deputy Dean remains out of focus as he speaks.  We remain with Huang Ling, watching her expression, barely changing, resigned and hopeless.  The only indicator of emotion is in the throat - this is a film that is obsessed with throats - and Huang Ling's swallow of emotion, her larynx rising and then falling, is the only visible indication of distress.  

"Why are you so positive about your future?"

All of this, as stated, takes place against the inescapable knowledge of the director's suicide.  Mental illness, depression and despair are immensely complicated, and this is not a diagnosis.  But in the way that the camera dwells on those that are left behind, those that are dealing with violence – the violence they have committed themselves, the violence they have caused, and the violence that has been committed against them – it is hard to escape the feeling that Hu Bo is attempting to anatomise those that are left behind.  Furthermore, Huang Ling's question to the Deputy Dean "Why are you so positive about your future?" is a genuine moment of enquiry rather than casually nihilistic rhetoric. 

There is little respite from sadness to be found in this film, and certainly not through the characters.  But even when the wider world comes into view, it is still largely bleak: the view from a car as it crawls along grey, sleet-flurried city roads; an anonymous wasteland that becomes the dumping ground for a beloved dead dog; a glimpse into a Chinese nursing home that holds no hope for those that grow old.  

The director Hu Bo

Yet despite this bleakness and the backstory it is an incredibly beautiful film.  Its sadness almost has you holding your breath.  I think again of my point of how these characters do much of their acting through their larynx.  And, without giving away a quietly beautiful ending, the close serves almost as a desperately needed exhalation.  Four hours may be a long time to hold your breath, but trust me, it is worth it.