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Poster for Still Life

Still Life

2006 · 1h 48m · Unrated Drama, Romance
Directed by Jia Zhangke

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Overview

A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
91%
Tomatometer
Fresh

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.

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
Fresh

Simply one of the best films of last year, this year, or any year likely to come.

Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly
Fresh

An extraordinary glimpse into the psychology, subtext and austere reality of modern Chinese culture.

Ted Fry, Seattle Times
Fresh

Never has destruction looked more beautiful than the demolished buildings in Jia Zhang-ke's Still Life.

G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle
Fresh

Writer-director Jia Zhangke is a keen observer of the effects of the break-neck modernization that is stampeding China toward a future that no one can predict, control, or contain.

Jonathan F. Richards, Film.com

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