An Elephant Sitting Still

An Elephant Sitting Still

China’s northernmost city, Manzhouli, has a border of 54 kilometers with Russia. It is also the busiest land port in China. Numerous railways cross it, like a system of veins and capillaries. They make for business and movement of goods possible. And this economic blood keeps flowing back and forth on the same route with trains that are ever lumbering on their course.

In Hu Bo’s single epic feature film “An Elephant Sitting Still,” there is an elephant that lives in Manzhouli an imaginary one that sits still while indifferent to the meanness of the world.

Hu Bo went to the Beijing Film Academy, where he earned his B.F.A. degree in directing. He directed some short films and was also a writer who published two books in 2017: “Huge Crack” and “Bullfrog.” After finishing his short film “Man in the Well” and “An Elephant Sitting Still,” Hu Bo killed himself at 28.

“An Elephant Sitting Still” is 230 minutes long; most scenes are grayish. The sun rarely comes out from behind clouds; four major characters have severe depression. Long shots often last tens of seconds with not much happening while being shot by an uncomfortably close camera. In this narrative of fate, various people convene at Manzhouli City because they feel connected to a mythic elephant there.

If cinema is based on time recording more than anything else, then “An Elephant Sitting Still” records time when all spiritual values have been emptied out of it (like what work does during communism). Lasting for one day (24 hours), many things happen around these people’s lives: sexual affair between family members; killing others without being punished or feeling regretful afterwards everything seems cyclical rather than linear here! Instead of giving peace through stillness, longer takes only make viewers’ hearts beat faster because Hu Bo moves his camera around constantly instead of keeping it steady at one place. Thus mise-en-scène represents characters stuck inside never-ending circles where they can’t break free from their environments.

The camera often gets close to them physically, as if not respecting their personal space or privacy rights; this is an intrusive surveillance method employed by detectives when investigating difficult cases. Who are these people? What do they want out of life? Why don’t they just kill themselves now that everything seems hopeless for them anyway? Also due to the low-angle shot used most times, there’s some sort of worshipful attitude directed towards these individuals too even though performed in a detached and cold manner always. The director must have loved each character so much since he wanted us all see through those dark clouds surrounding them!

The movie takes place in different places. The film is never set on Manzhouli and the characters never go there. It is a city of fantasy, an impossible destination, a jumping off point. All the characters want to go to Manzhouli but none of them can get there. People talk about getting on trains to Manzhouli but they just keep going in circles around Harbin.

The movement of the trains is depicted as constant. Every scene has either a train or a train station in it. They’re always coming and going. Passengers waiting for them are always waiting too long because the schedules are constantly changing and you can’t trust them.

This was supposed to be a story about Russia. The director went there and took photos, did research, shot background footage, all with the intention of creating his own elaborate Russian-set world back home in China. But when he got back from Russia he realized that nobody cared about Russian stories anymore so he threw everything away except what he learned while he was there: how to shoot people.

He didn’t want to make another documentary style film like his previous ones so he decided that instead of making something realistic or believable he would make something fake. This way he could create any kind of world he wanted without having to worry about whether or not it made sense.

So they built sets out of cardboard boxes and painted murals on the walls behind them to look like landscapes from old Russian movies. Then they dressed up their actors in costumes made out of newspaper and told them to pretend like they were living in some kind of alternate universe where everything was falling apart but nobody knew why.

And then they started shooting. They shot scenes where nothing happened and then cut those scenes together with other scenes where more nothing happened until eventually it became clear that nothing was ever going to happen at all.

But at least it was something different from what everyone else was doing at the time so people started to pay attention. They said it was a masterpiece. The director didn’t know what they were talking about but he liked the sound of the word so he went along with it.

They sent the movie to film festivals and it won awards. But nobody wanted to distribute it because they said it was too long and too slow and nobody would ever want to watch a movie where nothing happens for four hours.

So the director cut an hour out of the movie and then another hour until eventually there was only one hour left but at least now people could say that something happened even if they couldn’t say what.

But still nobody wanted to distribute it so instead they showed it in small theaters for two weeks at a time. Most of the screenings were empty except for a few film critics who wrote rave reviews about how brilliant and important the movie was even though they had fallen asleep halfway through.

And that’s when Bo Hu died. He killed himself by jumping off a building just like his character did at the end of his movie. Nobody knew why he did it but everyone said it was because he was depressed or because he couldn’t handle success or because he didn’t want to be alone anymore.

The film ended up being shown in a few more theaters after Bo Hu died but still nobody went to see it except for a few diehard fans who bought tickets just so they could say they saw the last movie Bo Hu ever made.

And then one day, all of a sudden, people started going back to see it again. Theaters were selling out every night for weeks on end. People were crying during the movie and then staying afterwards to talk about what they had seen until four in the morning.

They said that watching An Elephant Sitting Still felt like having their hearts ripped out of their chests but in a good way. They said that no other movies mattered anymore because this one was better than all of them combined.

They said that they had never seen anything like it before and that they would never see anything like it again. And then one day, all of a sudden, people stopped going to see it. Theaters were empty again except for a few diehard fans who bought tickets just so they could say they saw the last movie Bo Hu ever made.

And that was the end of An Elephant Sitting Still.

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