How director Jia Zhangke captures China’s economic rise in his gritty films

Jia used footage filmed over 20 years – as well as unused footage from previous movies – to create his latest work, an ode to China’s rapid development

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Jia Zhangke, a Chinese film and television director, screenwriter, producer, actor and writer. Photo: Jocelyn Tam

Douglas Parkes

Published: 6:15pm, 11 Dec 2024

If China’s rise is one of the biggest economic feats of the past half-century, Jia Zhangke is likely its most important chronicler. The Chinese filmmaker, now 54, has spent his career documenting the economic lift-off of his homeland, and the social changes that have taken place as a consequence.

This approach has earned Jia numerous awards, most notably the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion in 2006 for Still Life. Despite such acclaim, however, in 2008, New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis declared Jia “among the most strikingly gifted filmmakers working today whom you have probably never heard of”.

Jia Zhangke poses with the Golden Lion for best film for still life at the Venice International film Festival in 2006. Photo: AFP

Many of Jia’s tales begin and end in Shanxi province, the heart of northern China’s coal mining industry, the director’s personal hinterland, where he grew up and saw first-hand the initial waves of change sweeping across China.

“I remember my mother washing clothes by hand at home,” he says. “Then one day, when I was in elementary school, we saw a story on the news about the first washing machine made in Shanghai. We were amazed that such a thing even existed. Then, a year or two later, my family bought our own washing machine. It happened very fast.”

Jia’s obsession with documenting China’s development has perhaps reached its apogee in his latest film, Caught by the Tides (2024). The plot spans several decades and centres on the relationship between Qiao Qiao (Zhao Tao) and Guao Bin (Li Zhubin), a couple trying to make their way in their hometown of Datong, in northern China, in the 2000s. Eventually, Bin decides to leave, saying he’ll contact Qiao Qiao once he has established himself elsewhere. Years later, short of news, Qiao Qiao ventures to Fengjie, in the Three Gorges area, to search for her missing love.

Zhao Tao and Li Zhubin in a still from Caught by the Tides. Photo: courtesy of MK2 Films

Such a summary may imbue Caught by the Tides with wisps of a run-of-the-mill love story, but the execution is pure Jia Zhangke. The film documents China’s “economic miracle”, with its characters caught up in the titular waves of change, Jia’s perennial creative toil. Then there are the other stylistic trademarks: beyond the time skips and insistent pop music, the settings of Datong and the Three Gorges Dam are part of the film’s most remarkable feature – the repurposing of unused footage from the director’s previous movies as well as other material Jia has been shooting over the past two decades. All of which makes the characters in Tides seem as if they are ageing in real life, in the same way Richard Linklater shot his 2014 movie Boyhood, for which he filmed the actors over the course of several years.