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Caught by the Tides Is an Epic Built From Scraps
Jia Zhangke’s odyssey through 21st-century China is mostly footage shot during the production of other films. The result is staggering.
These early scenes from Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides, between the departing Bin (Li Zhubin) and his girlfriend Qiaoqiao (Zhao Tao), sketch the same frame used to mount so many westerns: There’s the man who sets out for the frontier, and the woman he leaves behind. Jia, who’s one of the best-known Chinese filmmakers still working in his home country, has spent more than 25 years making movies that set the delicate ties between lovers, families, and friends against the large-scale thrill and brutality of China’s hurtle into the 21st century. A more capitalist China is revealing itself — Beijing has just won its bid for the 2008 Olympics; soon the country will join the World Trade Organization — and when Qiaoqiao finally appears, she looks like an envoy from that future, picking her away along derelict streets in a bob wig, tight pants, and kitten-heeled mules.
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