Movie Review

Still Life (2008)

EW's GRADE
A

Details Limited Release: Jan 18, 2008; Rated: Unrated; Length: 108 Minutes; Genres: Drama, Foreign Language; With: Han Sanming and Zhao Tao

A DAM SHAME Zhao Tao (left) and Wang Hongwei in director Jia Zhang-ke\'s Still Life, a remarkable look at a...
A DAM SHAME Zhao Tao (left) and Wang Hongwei in director Jia Zhang-ke's Still Life, a remarkable look at a Chinese power project leaving many ordinary citizens displaced

The steep price of progress in his home country is a favorite theme of the great Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke (Platform, The World), who here turns his extraordinary eye on the apocalyptic engineering feat on the Yangtze River that is the Three Gorges Dam. More than a million people have been displaced in central China in the cause of generating electrical power to meet the needs of the future; Jia's flowing river of a picture washes over a few of them as they adjust to life's currents in the present. A

Originally posted Feb 14, 2008 Published in issue #979 Feb 22, 2008 Order article reprints

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