It is the career-reinventing, epic poem of a film by a Chinese master; it is also, this new work by Jia Zhangke, a defining portrait of modern China or any country undergoing rapid change. A drifting love story with many possible titles, “Caught in the Tide” (a phrase that suggests ebb and flow) is made up largely of footage from Mr. Jia’s own movies over the past 23 years and edited into extended montages that are sometimes set to music. This approach gives the film an extraordinary airiness.
Therefore, it is not surprising that “Caught by the Tides” starts with a song. In poor quality digital video, a bunch of women bundled up around a stove for Women’s Day have a sing-off. They’re each coaxed into singing one after another, and their untrained voices unexpectedly beautiful fill up the dingy room. This documentary intro (Jia has worked in fiction, nonfiction and hybrid forms across his career) might seem unrelated to what will follow it except in setting us down in Datong, where many of his movies are set, around 2001. But here already are many of his macro themes, in the love songs, folk songs and sentimental ballads of popular patriotism that the women choose. “Tides” is going to be very much about women or at least one woman facing down the romance and struggle of life in beloved yet difficult China.
The woman is Qiao Qiao, played by Jia’s wife Zhao Tao; but after more than 20 years together on screen and offstage (they met when he cast her as a gangster’s moll slash dancer for his first feature), it feels wrong to call her a muse or even a collaborator. She’s radiant with youth here too, seen through footage from “Unknown Pleasures” (2002), their second film together: coquettish under her dyed-blonde bob as she strolls past local guys who wolf-whistle at her in her neighborhood. She falls for Bin (Li Zhubin), whom we also remember from “Unknown Pleasures,” as well as from Zhao’s other films with Jia (“Still Life,” 2006; “A Touch of Sin,” 2013). But like so many young men throughout Jia’s filmography, Bin leaves Datong leaving behind his girlfriend who pines for him while he chases fortune elsewhere.
She spends years looking for him, and when they reunite in midlife she’ll have no choice but to come to the melancholic realization that the person she’s become during her search has outgrown its object in almost every way.
Jia’s films are not overtly feminist, but his appreciation of women’s survival is a throughline. And Qiao Qiao who isn’t technically mute here, though she barely speaks is a survivor: across these sampled films, she survives not only terrible boyfriends (including the one with whom she starts a caper at the heart of “Pleasures”), economic deprivation, massive social upheaval, crime, violence and imprisonment; but also the many shifts in tone and genre that his work undergoes over this period. It means that “Caught by the Tides,” for all its seemingly quixotic ambition to weave slender narrative from manifold story/character strands, can emerge as a powerfully coherent portrait of just one woman growing up through life (with a brief detour into death). Only a few sections were shot specifically for this film mostly the last part, set in 2023 when Qiao Qiao returns to Datong but it brings our social commentary right up to date with witty vignettes about a toothless local eccentric’s 1.2 million-strong social media following and Qiao Qiao’s odd-couple friendship with an unctuous supermarket robot.
It could easily be said of Jia’s latest movie “Tides” that it is perhaps his most successful experiment yet. This comes across as a strange film, almost like all those other films were building up to this point and he was just collecting materials along the way. Nobody can deny or ignore the shape/form of “Tides”, which is inextricable from its messages and long after one has finished watching it remains with you thanks to its beautifully intricate looping structure; however, this does not mean people need to fully comprehend every single aspect about said shape/form. For example, someone who knows everything about Jia might look at every scene wondering where they came from but such person will find themselves able put much PRIOR CONTEXT back into place through authentic aging process of actors or costumes used among other things like aspect ratio/stock quality etc.
Being unfakeable signs showing that something was made at an earlier time than now represented by the film itself. Yet still “Tides” draws you in and once it has got hold of you there is no escape for such devotee – indeed it seems odd that this should be seen by any fan as nothing more than a dot on page between two sentences (or words) signalling beginning/end; rather I see “Tides” Having been created when Jia’s career hit mid-point while going beyond what might have been considered peak performance level even though titled so translated into English would mean something different altogether possibly reading ‘Free From Constraints’ having looked back over many years carefully thinking about things done previously making unknown pleasures clear freed feels right now that time settles wind down tides turn beachfront offers infinite possibilities ahead which may never happen again.
For More Movies Visit Putlocker.