Film
Mountains May Depart
- Director
- Jia Zhangke
- Certificate
- 12A
- Running Time
- 126 mins
Jia Zhangke, director of Still Life and A Touch of Sin, serves up a three-part epic that leaps through time and across continents, even taking a trip into the speculative future of 2025.
At its heart is Shen Tao (played by Jia’s muse Zhao Tao), whom we meet in 1999 working as a dance teacher in a run-down studio in a northern mining town. Embracing the Pet Shop Boys-soundtracked capitalist spirit of the time, she trades up from her coal miner boyfriend to marry a boorish entrepreneur. The couple later have a child, who’s crassly named Dollar. It all adds up to a fascinating meditation on culture, identity and globalisation.
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