An Ele­phant Sit­ting Still

Book­end­ed, as it is, with a pair of sui­cides, it’s impos­si­ble not to think of the trag­ic cir­cum­stances of direc­tor Hu Bo’s death when watch­ing his debut fea­ture, An Ele­phant Sit­ting Still. Reports out of Chi­na make for tough read­ing, with claims of per­sis­tent bul­ly­ing direct­ed at the young film­mak­er through­out the film’s pro­duc­tion. A bit­ter dis­pute over the run­ning time (his pro­duc­ers want­ed it cut to two hours) saw him take his own life at just 29 years old, four months before the film’s world pre­mière at the Berlin Film Festival.

Sup­port from the likes of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Bela Tarr saw his 230 minute director’s cut pre­vail, and it’s a mag­nif­i­cent achieve­ment by any stan­dards, with­out ques­tion one of the strongest debuts in recent memory.

Set over 24 hours in Jingx­ing, Hebei province, an eco­nom­i­cal­ly evis­cer­at­ed for­mer coal-min­ing town devoid of any and all prospects, the film traces the inter­sect­ing actions of four prin­ci­pal char­ac­ters through a series of long, Steadicam mas­ter shots. Out­siders in their own lives, these four visions of impas­sive indif­fer­ence share a com­mon goal: to vis­it the ele­phant of the film’s title, apoc­ryphal­ly sit­ting in the town of Manzhouli, tak­ing no notice of the world around it.

It makes for an absurd metaphor, giv­en the cir­cum­stances. But then Hu has a keen aware­ness of the absur­di­ties of the pun­ish­ment he doles out across the film’s four hours. ​“Fuck, anoth­er lousy day starts again,” screams the father of Wei Bu in his son’s face, as he com­plains about the stink of uncol­lect­ed garbage that per­me­ates the town.

The boy’s day isn’t about to get any bet­ter. Armed with his cosh, he sets off to ​“the worst school in town,” one due to be demol­ished, and where the vice dean is car­ry­ing on with his crush, Huang ling. An alter­ca­tion with the school bul­ly over a stolen phone sees Wei Bu pur­sued by the boy’s old­er broth­er, a local gang­ster respon­si­ble for the death of a friend in the film’s open­ing minutes.

Hu’s Jingx­ing bears the colour of the tit­u­lar elephant’s hide, a per­ma­nent­ly over­cast con­crete bad­lands of relent­less suf­fer­ing. Most of the action takes place out­side, giv­en the lack of sanc­tu­ary pro­vid­ed by the film’s inte­ri­or spaces. Home is where your dead­beat par­ents start on the cans at break­fast; where you dis­cov­er your beloved grand­moth­er has been lying dead for days; where you come home to find your mis­sus with anoth­er man, so lob your­self out of a high-rise win­dow; where your kids want to pack you off to a nurs­ing home.

Hu’s view of the world may be over­bear­ing­ly grim, but he’s got a wicked­ly mor­dant way with dead­pan humour. ​“You will go to the worst high school in the city,” the vice dean tells Wei Bu, ​“When you grad­u­ate, most of you will become street food ven­dors.” As the boy exits the office, a fel­low pupil shuf­fles into frame, announc­ing, ​“The world is a waste­land,” before shuf­fling out.

If it sounds like an oppres­sive four hours, the remark­able sure­ty of Hu’s direc­tion pro­vides a rest­less momen­tum. It’s a film con­stant­ly in motion, track­ing cat and mouse alike through the city streets. The threat of vio­lence is ever-present, but Hu cuts away as it erupts. Con­flict is borne out of char­ac­ter and cir­cum­stance, rather than nar­ra­tive con­trivance or tra­di­tion­al dra­mat­ic structure.

The per­for­mances are inscrutable, delib­er­ate­ly so, emo­tion seem­ing­ly a waste of ener­gy when it’s clear no one gives a fuck. Yet the human­i­ty that Hu reveals in his relent­less close read­ings of these life-worn faces speaks of an acute empa­thy towards China’s social­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly disenfranchised.

“My life is like a fuck­ing dump­ster,” one char­ac­ter declaims with typ­i­cal blunt­ness. ​“You can go wher­ev­er you want,” says anoth­er, ​“But you’ll find noth­ing dif­fer­ent.” It’s a tragedy that the bril­liant tal­ent behind this mas­ter­piece appeared to agree.