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Reading Journal in New Perspectives to Film Culture: "Transforming Realism"


Transforming Realism
(June 13, 2018)

The transformability of realism in Chinese cinema is a testament to the ever changing landscape and social views as represented by the different coinages of the term realism, from bizhen (truth-to-life), xianshizhuyi (the ideological manifestation of the truth), xieshizhuyi (description of the real),  and jishizhuyi (on-the-spot documentary style as noted by Chris Berry.) However, as seen in Jia Zhangke’s 2006 film “Still Life” the experience of realism cinema is given a different treatment. In the midst of the plot where the characters struggle with daily life and their search, the film juxtaposes surreal events (of the imaginary and pop-culture) to what would have been the rudimentary “slices-of-life" scenarios, as seen in the UFO and the flying monument, which could instead provide a metaphorical reading of the narrative that the film describes (the exodus of people and tributes to workers.) The audience is also treated to seemingly mundane dealings of society through glimpses of their daily businesses whenever the main characters are placed at the side or off-camera, pertaining to a similar experience of being observers and participants of what is naturally occurring. However, as much as there is an artistic quality of story-telling found in Jia Zhangke’s film, there can also be derived certain commentaries about the social constructs that revolve in the community within the diegetic narrative that may hold true to the real. This, I believe, is part of the reflective quality of realism, that upon the earlier coinages of the term in Chinese cinema, would pertain to the description or manifestation of the real, or as James McGrath notes it as verisimilar realism that reflects the complex social realities (2016, 21). Still, one more variant of realism cinema that may best describe Jia Zhangke’s film is elliptical in which, since there is a multitude of truths, the filmmaker chooses to represent these using stylistic choices in order to point the limitations of realism itself– thus the inclusion of the surreal objects and the all-too-convenient deus ex machina-ish cliché of coincidence that tie the characters together. And still, in the end, what constitutes the realism within the film is the fact that the ending is not properly explained, like the title being called “Still Life” in English, was meant to only depict an episode of the life but not its entirety as we see the characters move on and leave for another journey.

One other important aspect of the film that relates to realism is spatiality, wherein the manipulation of the space within the framing of the camera creates a limitation of the reality that it wishes to present. We see this from the overcrowded spaces of where people gather and juxtaposed to the act of demolition of buildings to create more space for future projects. This is probably more relevant when considering the film as a social commentary about infrastructural projects such as the Three Gorge Dam in the film, where there is a need for destruction in order to create something new, but knowing as this was a real event, this becomes a form of documentary about the exodus of people from a place that was buried underwater and for housing complexes to be torn apart to make way for new buildings, and all of it captured within the space frame of a camera’s lens.

In conclusion, it is precisely because the term realism can be flexible that it allows different modes of capturing a specific event through the lens of a camera and preserving it. As Chris Berry puts it – "Jia Zhangke’s film invoke history and nation, they do not return to the progress narratives of modernity" (2014, 125) – a form of recording but also retelling without being confined to the expected national narrative, thus, creating a fresh or otherwise unknown perspective.
WC: 639

Works Cited:
1. Berry, Chris. 2014. “Jia Zhangke and the Temporality of Postsocialist Chinese Cinema: In the Now (and Then).” In Futures of Chinese Cinema: Technologies and Temporalities in Chinese Screen Cultures, 111–28.
2. McGrath, Jason. 2016. “Realism.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 10 (1). Routledge: 20–23. 
3. Still Life. Directed by Jia Zhangke. 2006.

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