It has been said before ... that it's not possible to provide a significant picture, or even a smaller 'slice of life' in the long run, without troubling oneself with social and artistic perspectives.

| Feb 14, 2021

In Still Life, with progress comes change, and it doesn't care if you are ready for it or not.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 25, 2020

More than just a window into a disappearing world, it is a requiem for the soul of a nation.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 6, 2019

Still Life is more than about China's Three Gorges Dam, or industrialisation, or modernisation, or its implications for individuals, or its consequences on society. Yes, these are all parts of Still Life, but like life, the film is more than this.

| Apr 29, 2019

Jia is a great director, and much of Still Life's power comes from the way he depicts his characters moving through the landscape... Jia's eye for composition recalls Antonioni in its rigor and poetry, but he isn't after mere pictorial splendor.

| May 17, 2018

...the neo-realism of Jia shooting his latest film "Still Life" around the actual Three Gorges Dam is stunning. It is a fresh, relieving change of course from the previous film's overwrought, overburdened allegorical setting.

| Nov 17, 2017

A lyrical pic that brilliantly blends together documentary and fantasy to paint an evocative picture of modern China that is free from the usual Red Chinese propaganda.

| Original Score: A- | Sep 15, 2012

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 18, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Jia draws a fine line between the corporeal and ethereal, a fitting means of highlighting the inherent unbelievability of one's way of life disappearing underwater.

| Oct 14, 2011

Observant and acts as a record of the inevitability of change, even ones mandated not by nature but by the government.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jun 16, 2010

Playful and moody, naturalistic and surreal, Still Life is a film not to be missed.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Jul 17, 2009

More than a million people have been displaced in central China in the cause of generating electrical power to meet the needs of the future; Jia's flowing river of a picture washes over a few of them as they adjust to life's currents in the present.

| Original Score: A | Nov 24, 2008

The despondent tone is lifted by moments of hope and, surprisingly, hilarity.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 20, 2008

Still Life is a moody undertaking, with little action but plenty going on.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 18, 2008

Jia Zhang Ke is perhaps the most distinctive director working in China now.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 18, 2008

Still Life is all about these common people existing in a world that seems more and more unreal

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 13, 2008

Simply one of the best films of last year, this year, or any year likely to come.

| Oct 3, 2008

An extraordinary glimpse into the psychology, subtext and austere reality of modern Chinese culture.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 26, 2008

Director Jia Zhang-ke sees the urbanization of China through the eyes of the relocated laborers.

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 26, 2008