All over the county, buildings have been demolished into concrete mountains and the million or so people who lived in them are being gradually relocated to a higher altitude. "Still Life," which won the top prize at 2006's Venice Film Festival, climbs along the debris, sails along the river, and, in a series of barren rooms, carves out a story. The drama at its center is an elemental search: man looks for woman. Jia's narrative approach prizes ambiguity, but it bears out. What seems uncertain attains solidity and then dramatic form, like metal filaments gathering around an unexpected magnetized surface until some arresting image takes shape.
The man, Sanming (Han Sanming) is a miner, who has come to Fengjie in an ill-fitting tank top and pants that rise to his abdomen. He's looking for his very estranged wife and daughter. It's been 16 years, and everything is upside down. His old street is underwater. His two women are gone. While he waits for news of them, he joins his brother-in-law's demolition crew and swings a hammer at the stony ruins that haven't already been blown to rubble and dust.
Finding anything against such a smashed up backdrop seems wishful at best. Substance plays an amazing role in this film: All that's actually concrete in this film is concrete itself. The true state of everything else is anybody's guess. At the halfway point, the movie switches perspectives - a woman, Shen Hong (Zhao Tao) searches for a man - and we move to a massive oxidized factory, whose ex-employees whack at the structure's rusting metal. They're jobless since the owner sold the business, and they're furious.
