An Elephant Sitting Still

The feature debut of a novelist turned filmmaker Hu Bo, loosely based on his own novel, is an intimate yet sprawling drama that follows a group of characters over the course of a single day in a small industrial city in Northern China. There's a bullied high school boy who faces a dead-end future with a doomed resignation, the girl he likes who is involved with the married vice principal, an aging pensioner whose son is sending him to a depressing retirement home, and a petty gangster having an affair with his best friend's wife. The characters periodically cross paths over the eventful day until their stories become entwined in the final hour of the film but they remain distant and disconnected in their misery. The elephant of the title is a fable of sorts, the story of an animal in a zoo in the Mongolian city of Manzhouli that is indifferent to the world that keeps him prisoner, and it hangs over the film as both a metaphor and a dream for a better life elsewhere. Almost four hours long and shot in long, sustained takes with a handheld camera that isolates its subjects in their misery, "An Elephant Standing Still" is a demanding but powerful film that expresses a sense of disaffection and disillusionment in modern China. The critically acclaimed film became a kind of cause celebre after its 29-year-old director committed suicide soon after completing the film and it won awards from festivals all around the world, but the appeal to this compassionate but bleak drama will be limited to serious film aficionados and dedicated viewers. Optional purchase. (S. Axmaker)