Editor’s Notes: Mountains May Depart is currently playing in Toronto in limited release at TIFF Bell Lightbox.
In Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke’s 2013 A Touch of Sin, we see four stories based on specific incidents. The film has grown in my mind ever since seeing it a few years ago because these disparate yet somehow cohesive stories all lend insight to a nationalistic mood. In Mountains May Depart, Jia’s latest which stormed out of the gates at Cannes last May, the stories remain specific in nature, yet the larger messages are muddled. Somewhere amongst the timeline set out is commentary on everything from increasing Chinese capitalism to searching for immigrated relatives. It’s a bit too difficult to parse out.
Somewhere amongst the timeline set out is commentary on everything from increasing Chinese capitalism to searching for immigrated relatives.
Tao (Tao Zhao), a smart and hard-working woman in rural China, is the object of affection of two men, Jinsheng (Yi Zhang) and Liangzi (Jing Dong Liang). Our story opens on the evolution of this trio in 1999, and continues until the situation becomes untenable, nearly coming to blows. A choice is made, and three lives are changed. The film then jumps twice more, once to 2014, and the other to a delicately futuristic 2025. Here the focus often shifts, less towards our original three and more towards Tao’s son Dollar (Zijian Dong) at two important stages of his life. During the “present day” portion, Dollar is an international school student in Shanghai, returning to rural China to mourn his grandfather, while in 2025, he’s a far-flung English-speaking immigrant in Australia.
If that all sounds ambitious in scope, it’s because Jia (here directing and writing) attempts to weave his themes of national and personal identity into a multi-generational framework. In focusing the first segment on Tao’s introduction to married life and the latter on her son Dollar (the 2014 segment is chiefly about both of them), Jia weighs equally the value of these two generations, and attempts to tell both their stories (and their short time together) uniformly. Yet the three resulting segments, despite similar faults in each, appear more incongruous as the film rolls on. This isn’t an attack on the form (A Touch of Sin or Argentina’s Wild Tales have been enjoyable in their own right), rather the discordant (and sometimes absent) connections between each segment. Even within the 40 minute portions, each reaches a feeling of stasis before being able to make a point.
That such an elaborate setup can say so little is a shame. Jia’s DP Nelson Lik-wai Yu (who also shot A Touch of Sin) once again proves his aptitude in filming the empty vistas of rural China, capturing the invisible barriers around the residents of a smaller settlement. Although the 2025 portion of the script is woefully underthought, the bright emptiness of the characters’ new lives in Australia is absolutely vivid (credit the production design team here as well). Here too does Yoshihiro Hanno’s score adapt with the times. The refrain is repeated, but is given a subtle electronic makeover in the new chronology. It’s a subtle touch that’s entirely lacking for much of the rest of the film.
Each portion of Mountains May Depart holds plenty of material to examine: the ramifications of sparring men in a small town, a mother grieving loss which comes in many forms, an exposé of the modern affluent Chinese diaspora.
Each portion of Mountains May Depart holds plenty of material to examine: the ramifications of sparring men in a small town, a mother grieving loss which comes in many forms, an exposé of the modern affluent Chinese diaspora. Yet none of the pieces individually pack much insight, and together lack the cohesiveness to make a statement about the Chinese people today. Furthermore, an undercooked script has a hard time establishing what any of the characters are actually thinking. Mountains May Depart is an underwhelming effort from one of China’s most exciting directors.
None of the pieces individually pack much insight, and together lack the cohesiveness to make a statement about the Chinese people today. Furthermore, an undercooked script has a hard time establishing what any of the characters are actually thinking. Mountains May Depart is an underwhelming effort from one of China’s most exciting directors.
