An Elephant Sitting Still

I didn’t have the opportunity to watch Hu Bo’s first and final feature An Elephant Sitting Still until it arrived on the Criterion Channel this November. It also wasn’t until I sat down to watch it that I found out that the film was four hours long. This was joyous news as I have been in love with super long cinema for some time now. While this may sound daunting to some, the film more than justifies its entire runtime and is a marvelous achievement in cinema.

All the great movies of long cinema make use of time as a narrative device. Why tell a story with so much time if you’re going to a regular story? Most long narrative films take the obvious route and use the extra time to tell extra-large stories about history and famous people, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone with the Wind or The Godfather Part 2. The length of the feature is reflected in the historical length of the narrative.

An Elephant Sitting Still is a little different; it doesn’t use time as a device to express an epic scope, rather it emphasizes the short amount of time that the narrative covers. The film sets out to express the feeling of one long day in four people's lives. The film stretches time, calling the audience to look at how overwhelming such a small amount of time can feel in a cold and alienating environment.

An Elephant Sitting Still is about a single day in the life of four interconnected people in an unnamed Chinese city. The four characters cross paths at various points as they try to find some hope in a seemingly uncaring society. Hu Bo is trying to grasp at something fundamentally human here and if he manages to catch anything is left to the viewer. The very act of reaching out towards truth through empathetic filmmaking is worthy of praise.

Looking at it from an economic storytelling position, Hu Bo could have cut the movie down if the goal was to tell the epic with no soul. What ends up happening in An Elephant Sitting Still isn't the point, rather it's the time we spend with the four wayward souls looking for a light in the darkness. The four hours are about the quiet existential melancholy that seeps into your bones as the day wears on and your knowledge of the characters deepens. If you’re only interested in “what” happens in a movie then this film isn’t for you. Very little happens, and yet so much is expressed. A film like this adequately expresses how the events of a narrative are comparatively trivial to its emotional intelligence.

The camera and the director force the audience to stay with the characters. Hu Bo holds the frame for a long time so we can see past the external circumstances and into the character's fractured souls. An Elephant Sitting Still is an unparalleled achievement in Chinese and world cinema. While it's mammoth runtime and pervasive dreariness may be a turnoff for some, it's a movie that earns the respect of those willing to give it the time. Once it takes ahold of you it doesn’t let go. 

An Elephant Sitting Still is currently streaming on TheCriterionChannel