It follows Venice winners Dong (2006), and Useless (2007). Yu, born in the provinces in the '60s, labored unhappily as a dentist before gaining fame for his short stories, and his tales of struggling to get published will wring sympathy from scribes everywhere. Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue. The Film Stage Rory O'Connor. Metascore Based on 5 critic reviews provided by Metacritic.com. 75. Drag Race Recap: Which 'Lucky' Queens Are Going to the Season 13 Finale. Inspired by a literature festival taking place in his native Shanxi province, the doc may be considered the third part of Jia’s trilogy on the arts in China. (Some potentially touching scenes are lost to bombast: In a film heavy on classical cues from Shostakovich and Rachmaninov, delicate footage of the Liang family’s trip to the cemetery is ruinously scored to Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma.”) The final effect is patchier and stuffier than it ought to be, particularly given that Jia’s bittersweet home-soil nostalgia has already made for a more consistent documentary that he didn’t direct: Walter Salles’ flavorful 2014 portrait “Jia Zhang-ke: A Guy From Fenyang.” With respect to his estimable chosen subjects, perhaps there are too many people’s words in the way this time. Film runs Thursday, October 1, 2020 - Tuesday, October 6, 2020 share. Play Trailer; Overview. EXCLUSIVE: Cinema Guild has picked up U.S. distribution rights to Jia Zhangke’s documentary Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue. Yet a political dimension wafts through the film’s title, which is taken from a twice-told story by one of the writers, Yu Hua, who remembers swimming out past a sea of yellow water as a child and trying to reach the place where the sea turned blue. Variety and the Flying V logos are trademarks of Variety Media, LLC. This is probably the case of a well-made film whose main audience will be its local viewers or, at most, dedicated China fans at festivals like Berlin. TWITTER Source: X Stream Pictures 'Swimming Out Till The Sea Turns Blue' Dir: Jia Zhang-ke. We move on to 67-year-old Jia Pingwa, the son of counterrevolutionaries who became a leading figure in China’s roots literature movement; 59-year-old Yu Hua, a slight thematic outlier for his oeuvre’s focus on individualism over community, as well as transitional urban-rural spaces; and 46-year-old Liang Hong, the only woman of the four, who has devoted multiple volumes to the effect of political and economic change on her home village, and movingly reflects on her mother’s passing. Through the mature, sensitive eyes of three writers, who are affectionately connected to these everyday people, we see the profound and generally positive changes that have been wrought in the country since the 1940s. A 91-year-old man recalls the hunger the village suffered in 1949, when they were unable to cultivate the alkaline soil until, one day, they organized themselves into small work units following Mao’s dictum that strength lies in unity, and by filtering irrigation water made the land fertile and productive. Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival. “Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue” is thus more rewarding when it focuses on everyday rural rituals and images, be it a gorgeous, gradually panoramic scene of villagers harvesting wheat, a flotilla of paper lanterns on the Yellow River, or a gentle, plainspoken interview … It follows Venice winners Dong (2006), and Useless (2007). Though such regions have lost much of their younger population to the cities in recent decades, “Swimming Out” optimistically centers writers — not all of them fellow Shanxi natives — who have stayed put to document rural life and evolution. Yet for both writers, who now live in Beijing, their native land still calls to them strongly and informs their novels. The writer Jia Pingwa, born in the '50s, describes how the Cultural Revolution closed the schools and sent his father, a teacher, to do forced labor. With Huifang Duan, Liang Hong, Pingwa Jia, Hua Yu. “Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue” covers 18 chapters, each segmented into a topic of conversation, from motherhood to literature to farming. Jia Zhangke, the master chronicler of China's changing times, presents Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue, a touching documentary on four contemporary Chinese writers.This is … In 2015, Jia Zhangke returned to Cannes to receive the Carrosse d’Or Prize and his feature MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART (2015) was selected in Competition. Swimming Out Till The Sea Turns Blue REVIEW | Berlinale 2020 Fenyang village in the Shanxi province holds a special place in the heart of Jia Zhang-ke. The result, though intermittently stirring and often luminously shot, represents something of a chore for all but the most ardent Jia completists — and even some of them may be left adrift by the literary scope of a film that does surprisingly little to contextualize its subjects for viewers unfamiliar with their work. She was forced to stand outside class for a month because her parents couldn’t afford to pay the tuition fee of $6. FACEBOOK THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER is a registered trademark of The Hollywood Reporter, LLC. This lovely passing moment that comes early on in Jia Zhang-ke’s new documentary “Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue,” a film otherwise pretty short on small or incidental gestures, with its themes largely spoken rather than observed. 'Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue' is a Rare Misstep for Jia Zhangke Too much time with talking heads makes for a static, unbalanced examination of Chinese society over the past 80 years. HIs first stop is the Jia Family Village (no relation to the filmmaker), where he inserts a shot from his film Platform showing people chatting in front of a large wall mural of the city. The imbalance of Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue and Zhang-ke’s rambling form of storytelling causes problems early and often. Jia’s earnest approach has always been endearing and Swimming Out sees it in full flight. The choice to use classical Western music as a counterpart, particularly Shostakovich, underlines the impression of celebrating them, though the triumphant notes of Puccini's "Nessun Dorma" go too far to Western ears. © Copyright 2021 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media, LLC. AdChoices 2011) Jia Zhang-ke returns to non-fiction with Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue, the final panel in his trilogy about the arts in China. It follows, at a distance, 2005's Dong (about the painter Liu Xiaodong) and 2006's Useless (about fashion designer Ma Ke). He belonged to China’s first generation of educated farmers. “Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue” is thus more rewarding when it focuses on everyday rural rituals and images, be it a gorgeous, gradually panoramic scene of villagers harvesting wheat, a flotilla of paper lanterns on the Yellow River, or a gentle, plainspoken interview with Liang’s physics-fixated 14-year-old son. Sitemap | All rights reserved. There’s not much in the way of a climax or final insights to close the film’s casual structure. Instead, the silent unflappability of the ordinary Shanxi resident represents a history drifting forward like a ship at sea. Jia evokes and celebrates their lives in 18 titled chapters. 70. The three living authors are all generous interviewees, though aside from stray quotes from their books recited by younger readers — and repeated in text on a black screen — the film can’t do much to make their work seem more immediate to audiences. (Oddly, there’s nary a mention of the fact that Yu Hua’s novel “To Live” became one of Zhang Yimou’s greatest films in 1994.). The decision to divide the documentary into chapters turns out to be as superfluous as the convention of authors will ultimately turn out to be. 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Other changes included the banning of arranged marriages. Editor: Kong Jing-lei Although it's a film about intellectuals that builds on and incorporates China’s past, Jia Zhangke’s Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue (Yi zhi you dao hai shui bian lan) frequently reverts to … She is a staff writer at the feminist film journal Another Gaze and her work has appeared in publications including Cinema Scope, Cineaste, Canadian Art, MUBI Notebook, and Reverse Shot.. View all articles by Katherine Connell » Auteur Jia Zhangke tells a literary history of post-1949 China in his latest documentary “Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue.” By Anthony Kao, 27 Sep 20 19:15 GMT swimming out till the sea turns blue dir. Review: Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue Sees China as a Symphony of Change Jia Zhang-ke’s film is a quietly reflective, intermittently rambling rumination on an explosively momentous period in Chinese history. Jia Zhangke. World sales: MK2. A winding, discursive structure of 18 “chapters” — some single, ambient shots, others built around lengthy talking-head interviews — sees the film’s approach shift between straightforward biography and more personal, emotive ruminations on social change in China over the last century. In 2018 ASH IS PUREST WHITE featured in competition at Cannes 2018. There is a quick roundup of guests at Shanxin’s first Literature Festival, attended by a bevy of writers speaking to an audience of very serious young people in glasses. Reviews; Share Share Link; Facebook; Tweet; Expand. Swimming Out Till The Sea Turns Blue – Clip "The Old and New" from MK2 on Vimeo. EMAIL ME. The tension between the urban and the rural continued to loom large … Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue (2020) 12 09/24/2020 (CA) Documentary 1h 52m User Score. The daughter of a remarkable writer-activist named Ma Feng recalls her father’s evolution from a poor boy to a journalist and youth leader during World War II. Directed by Zhangke Jia. Jia’s films continue to document that change in hue, however grand or humble they might be. “Dong” and “Useless” were short, illuminating works; the two-hour “Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue,” as signified by its lolling, poetic title, is rather more of a sprawl, seeking to address a hefty chunk of modern Chinese cultural history through the lives and legacies of its chosen quartet of writers. Katherine Connell is a writer based in Toronto. There is nothing controversial here, and the dramas and tragedies that are recounted feel like they belong to the distant past, principally involving personal and family events. Director-screenwriter: Jia Zhangke The first of these, the aforementioned Ma Feng, passed away in 2004, and his career and influence on the other three (each representing a successive generation, and all alive and well in the film) is discussed in adulatory terms: In addition to his literary contribution to Shanxi history, he was a community leader who campaigned for the improvement of the region’s salty, infertile soil.
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