How Jia Zhangke’s film Caught by the Tides uses 20 years of footage to capture a changing China
- Written by Thomas Moran, Lecturer in the Department of English, Creative Writing and Film, University of Adelaide
Chinese independent director Jia Zhangke’s new film Caught by the Tides, now in select Australian cinemas, provides a unique vision of China’s rapid social transformation in the 21st century.
Using a combination of documentary footage and scenes shot by Jia over the past 20 years during the making of his earlier films, Caught by the Tides follows Qiaoqiao (Zhao Tao) and her boyfriend, small-time hustler Bin (Li Zhubin).
Bin leaves their small town to make his fortune working on the Three Gorges Dam and Qiaoqiao goes to find him, taking her on a journey through the changing landscape of contemporary China.
The film not only registers monumental changes, like the building of the dam, but the minutiae of everyday details from changing fashion to altered streetscapes.
Jia’s film is a quiet and meditative affair which dwells on the passage of time in a fast-paced world. The film not only captures 20 years in a rapidly changing China, but also offers a reflection on Jia’s career as a filmmaker.
Framing the provinces
Jia was born in 1970. He grew up in the city of Fenyang, Shanxi province, and came of age during Deng Xiaoping’s economic liberalisation and “opening up” of the 1980s.
He studied at the Beijing Film Academy before returning home to shoot his first feature Xiao Wu (Pickpocket) in 1997.
The films he made in Shanxi – Xiao Wu, Platform (2000) and Unknown Pleasures (2002) – have been dubbed his “hometown trilogy”.
Shanxi is known for its notoriously dangerous coal mining industry. Jia focused on the lives of those left behind by China’s “economic miracle” and life outside of the metropolis. His use of non-actors, preference for street shooting and slow minimalist style set his work apart from commercial Chinese cinema.
The second film in the trilogy, Platform, includes a mesmerising performance from Zhao Tao, then an unknown actor who has since starred in all of Jia’s later films. Zhao and Jia were married in 2012. Zhao is a key artistic collaborator whose portrayal of strong female protagonists is central to all the director’s later work.
Cinema and cultural memory
Jia’s international breakthrough came with Still Life (2006), shot in the ancient area of Fengjie on the banks of the Yangtze while cities were being demolished and thousands displaced to make way for the Three Gorges Dam.
Working on Still Life confirmed Jia’s belief in “cinema’s function as memory” which captures the present before it disappears. Still Life combined Jia’s early realist style with a new surreal approach, including a building taking off and a mysterious flying saucer zooming into the distance.
To Jia, this blend of realism and surrealism is essential for portraying China’s rapid historical transformation. He says the speed of development in China “has had an unsettling surreal effect”.
To represent this, he has experimented with all the possibilities of cinema blending documentary, fiction, animation, pop music, Chinese opera and digital images to create a stunning body of work.
Caught by the tides of history
Caught by the Tides continues Jia’s experimentation with cinema and history in his most ambitious work to date.
Production was influenced by the COVID pandemic, when Jia was unable to start work on a new film. Instead, he began to review footage he and his director of photography Yu Lik-Wai had shot since 2001.
Jia describes the process of reviewing the footage as “like time-travelling” as he returned to the beginning of the 21st century and his youth.
The film is partly composed of a collage of documentary footage which Jia and his collaborators spent over two years editing. We see excitement in the streets when Beijing is announced as the host city of the 2008 Olympic Games, before cutting to a montage of young people dancing in strobe-lit underground nightclubs.
This kaleidoscope of documentary footage is combined with scenes shot during the making of Jia’s earlier films. From this combination of archival footage featuring Jia’s regular stars Zhao and Li Zubin, a story emerges about China’s rapid change.
As Qiaoqiao guides the viewer through the chaotic transformations taking place in the country, there is something particularly arresting about seeing places and actors change before our very eyes.
The final scenes, shot with modern digital cameras, have a sleek and cold aesthetic in contrast to the pixelated early footage. It is in part a reflection of Jia’s own melancholic view of historical change in which the past is forgotten, and the everyday lives of ordinary people disappear from view. Yet as a whole, the film suggests cinema can preserve the past and give dignity and beauty to everyday experiences.
Caught By the Tides provides viewers with a refreshing glimpse of Chinese life from within. Cinema like Jia’s remains in a unique position to promote a more nuanced view of China’s complex and ever-evolving history.
Authors: Thomas Moran, Lecturer in the Department of English, Creative Writing and Film, University of Adelaide
