An Elephant Sitting Still
There is a level of uncertainty that underlines much of Hu Bo’s first and tragically last film, An Elephant Sitting Still. Based on a novel of the same name by Hu and playing at just under four hours long, four distinct and often intersecting stories are told over 24 hours. The film begins with the tale of an elephant merely sitting in a nearby town — utterly indifferent to the world around it — told by the first character we meet, Yu Cheng, a small-time gangster whose day begins with the suicide of his best friend following their discovery of Cheng sleeping with their wife. We then meet Wei Bu, a high school student mostly passive to the world around him. He is bullied at home and school but following an incident that leaves the school bully seriously injured, Wei Bu finds himself on the run while the bullies brother, Yu Cheng, searches for him. We are then introduced to Huang Ling, a classmate and crush of Wei Bu, who is having an inappropriate relationship with the schools vice-dean while dealing with an alcoholic and demeaning mother at home. The last character we follow in the film is Wang Jin, an older man whose son-in-law and daughter want to move him to a nursing home to afford to move and send their daughter to a better school.
Much discussion around this film revolves around not just its gargantuan runtime but of the suicide of the films writer/director/editor Hu Bo. Arguments around the runtime and marketability of the film with its producer drove Hu to a dark point and it is something that casts a shadow over the release. It is clear that Hu did not care if the film was marketable or not, this was the version he wanted the world to see.
Magnolia is a film that comes to mind when wanting to describe this. Both are auteur-driven mosaics of broken and lost people in an often unapologetic world. However, whereas Paul Thomas Anderson’s film heightened its melodrama, An Elephant Sitting Still plays against the traditional melodrama formula. There are still affairs and spurts of violence mixed in with family drama and a coming of age story but it all often plays like a very real and surreal anti-melodrama.
The majority of the film is told through expertly done long takes that put the viewer firmly in the reality of the characters. The digital cinematography by first-time cinematographer Fan Chao fully expresses the feelings these characters feel by often isolating a single character in the frame, blurring the background or foreground, or having a character speak off-camera. The film is also very grey, not just in its material but in its muted colour palette. It was Hu’s insistence to shoot at dawn and dusk to make sure colours were muted in such away.
All the performances are incredibly understated in a way that no one actor sincerely signs, very much keeping in line with its neorealist sensibilities while still being able to throw the actors into surreal situations. The film sparsely uses a score, either utilizing non-diegetic sources or a few pieces composed for the film by Chinese band Hua Lun. It is all edited together without ever crumbling under its own weight by Hu, who showed great rhythm as an editor with a film comprised mostly of long takes.
The tale of the elephant becomes almost the last sign of hope for the characters and a perfect metaphor for the modern world. Hu’s film is not a comfortable experience. The runtime can seem daunting and there’s a hopelessness to the proceedings that would turn away most audiences. Nevertheless, what lies within is a work by an artist trying their hardest to show the reality of what living in modern China and, by extension, the modern world has become. An Elephant Sitting Still is a lot to take in on initial viewing but it is a work that stays with audiences long after it has cut to black.
