An Elephant Sitting Still (2018)
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An Elephant Sitting Still Movie Review
An Elephant Sitting Still is a 2018 Chinese drama film directed by Hu Bo and starring Peng Yuchang among others. It’s a difficult to watch, but memorably moody film.
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“Life just won’t get better.
It’s all about agony.
That agony has begun since you were born“
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This drama follows a bunch of unrelated characters whose lives are entangled together into one miserable whole. Being obviously inspired by ‘Amores perros’, this movie was thus quite interesting to me, though quite inferior to that amazing feature.
The intricate storytelling allowed for very strong connections to be established between the characters, connections that felt natural and never forced or sappy. I personally found the dog drama the most involving part of this whole film as it was very moving while the bullying subplot was incredibly well handled as well.
The movie is about a lot of things, but most importantly about depression. Yes, it tackles criminal behavior and also isolation, but depression is its driving emotion. It is evident from the first to the last moment who made this movie – a man who would end up killing himself shortly after finishing it.
That’s because the picture has that prevailing sense of sadness, despair and depression that grips the viewer and never lets go. In particular, the scene where one character yells about people being evil and failing to understand why was very important and powerful to me as it explores how this world can be too much to bear for some which is why they end up committing suicide.
Many people are after you to harm you in some way, and for some it might be difficult coping with the realization that you cannot ever change people and bad circumstances in one’s life. That’s also the film’s flaw as it is very one-sided in its absolute darkness, and we never see any light in this tunnel at all.
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An Elephant Sitting Still is very well made technically speaking with some terrific tracking shots of the characters that give emotion to all scenes as well as intimacy and immediacy. However, the film’s four-hour runtime and slow pace and extremely depressing nature obviously made it very difficult to watch, and it’s not easy to make it to the end in just one sitting. It leaves an impression for sure, but we could have arrived there with less of darkness and runtime.
An Elephant Sitting Still is incredibly long for sure. Couple that with a very slow pace and excruciatingly dark, depressing tone, and it may be difficult to get through. But it does leave a strong impression as it explores loneliness, depression and especially darkness in humanity very potently. It’s also well shot and it features powerful dialogue and emotion.
