Over the past several decades, Jia Zhangke has become the foremost filmmaker to capture not only the rapid development of China through the 21st century but also how that explosive expansion has shaped the lives within it. In that way, Zhangke is equally one of China’s greatest working artists and most accomplished inside ethnographers, studying his native country’s cultural shifts in the most expressive terms. His first fiction film in six years, “Caught by the Tides,” is the purest distillation of his life’s work yet a grand, abstracted mosaic of this century’s constant change, reinterpreting key works in his own career along the way.
It’s not just unlike anything Zhangke has made up to now, but any movie a filmmaker has made, period. “Caught by the Tides” is an almost impressionistic assembly of twenty-odd years worth of filming, blending reels of behind-the-scenes footage captured on projects like “Mountains May Depart” with spontaneous fictionalized elements. In the final third, “Caught by the Tides” transforms into a disarmingly tender love story, focusing especially on frequent collaborator (and partner) Zhao Tao as the silent protagonist, that reflects current circumstances back at us with modern-lensed poignance.
“Caught by the Tides” unfolds as an epic kaleidoscope of time and place, gently gliding through a huge ensemble of people and faces (real and fictionalized) while sketches of narrative slowly fill in over the film’s nearly two-hour running time. It’s not Zhangke’s most welcoming feature –– it’s perhaps most rewarding to those fairly familiar with his past work (it has narrative similarities to multiple past works, such as 2018’s moving “Ash is Purest White”), and chunky stretches patiently show the bustle of Chinese daily life across months and years without much conventional “story.” Yet, as loosely defined as the narrative is for much of “Caught by the Tides,” its unusual flow and structure are rewarding to surrender to; the cumulative effect of seeing time and history captured is both immensely moving and humblingly cosmic. It’s a work that is both uniquely Chinese and truly universal, chronicling the evolving digital age with an uncommon understanding of how these changes have permanently rewritten the shape of our lives.
I spoke with Zhangke over Zoom and conducted by an interpreter.
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*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
NBP: I wanted to start by talking about the way “Caught by the Tides” is mostly behind-the-scenes footage alongside various of your film productions blended with new material, testing the boundary between documentary and fiction. What was the process in realizing this approach was right for the story you wanted to tell here?Â
Jia Zhangke: The project started in 2001, around the turn of the century, and I had a working title at the time called “Man with a Digital Camera” (a reference to Dziga Vertov’s “Man with a Movie Camera”). I wanted to start this project because I was witnessing this kind of turn-of-the-century energy (where people were) moving around and looking for their new lives to transform themselves for this new millennium, and as a coincidence (there was) the introduction of the digital camera. (I wanted) to take this digital camera to a space or to a location that really moved me and touched me. And operating on this sense of “it’s a film I’ll know, and it’s a free-form way of capturing images that moved me and touched me.“
Sometimes, I’d do it as a documentary doing what I observed, and sometimes, I’d have a particular small crew creating some kinds of fictionalized scenarios or characters. And again, everything was very spontaneous and improvisational. All I wanted to do was just capture the zeitgeist and the moment of the turn of the century. I also trusted that in the end, somehow, all of these elements, whether documentary elements or fictional elements, are connected. Decades later, during the editing process, I started to think about how I was going to structure this film. I started going back to the original idea of how I started capturing and archiving the footage, trying to somehow blur the boundaries of documentary and narrative filmmaking, creating something that is spontaneous, improvisational, and free-form.
So for me, really thinking about the reality that I can capture using documentary filmmaking to not only capture but archive footage, and the imagination that I can somehow bounce off the reality that I have captured through the footage, I received through both (documentary and fiction) the same thing. I was using fictional devices to actualize the reality I have captured (as) part of the same process, visual history, and visual language.
That makes sense, and I’m glad you brought up the idea of the role of digital cinema here. I wanted to ask abouthow you mixed the various formats, from video tape to early digital, and how you switched to more modern cameras as newer technologies became available. For me, there was almost an emotional nostalgia in seeing all these different capture formats used and intermixed over time, especially because they were what I was familiar with growing up. Can you talk about how your use of digital cinema as a concept evolved as the project developed?
When I first started this video project with (a) digital camera, I didn’t really think I was going to make a film with such a long time span at the time. Therefore, I didn’t really design this kind of different generation of digital technology in the narrative. I do think that in 2001, when I started using digital technology in China, it was still in the infancy stage, and a lot of people, especially those coming from the conventional way of using film stocks, didn’t really trust this new digital technology. They really saw it as something that was immature and full of weaknesses and drawbacks. For me, I saw it as something unique that I wanted to experiment with.
It is such an agile, very mobile device that I can just use in real public spaces without drawing too much attention. This is also the technology I can use to film in very low-light situations and have this very close proximity with the subjects I’m filming. For these reasons, I’m still using the digital camera to film everything I wanted to capture of the zeitgeist of that particular era for 2-3 years. And when I looked at the footage, I didn’t think it was really sufficient to really create the film I wanted, so I decided to continue collecting and archiving footage on and off for the past twenty-plus years. So, in addition to continuing to shoot with digital cameras (and) of course, with the different generations of evolutions of digital technology, I also started taking on these new technologies into my filming process.
Looking back, I think using digital technology to film in 2001, especially in the context of China, has two significant meanings. One is that it really provided young people, young filmmakers, this opportunity and also the possibility to express themselves through independent filmmaking. They can just pick up the camera and start creating through the digital camera. The other significant meaning is that, as a result, they don’t have to be somehow bound to or limited by the conventional studio systems in China in order to make films.
So, during the editing process, I really saw that all the footage that I collected and archived almost became this history of digital technology, almost like a museum with rich textures and histories of this particular medium. And, of course, throughout the twenty-plus years making or collecting the footage, I used different cameras, including the Canon 5D cameras and regular still photography cameras, and of course, I also used film stock to capture some of the footage throughout the years. But at the same time, I always wanted to keep all these different types of footage through differenttechnologies and different mediums to try to keep the textures and uniqueness of its original state. We don’t want to distort anything; we don’t want to somehow make any changes. We’re just meant to (see) how it looks in its rawest form; it’s more natural and original form.
I’d love to ask about how so many of my favorite moments in “Tides,“ like the tracking shot moving through Datong city or the boat montages, simply capture life at a given moment in time, usually accompanied by music.I’m curious what surprised you about all those quiet moments of daily life revisiting that footage decades later?
I think to look at the footage I captured more than twenty plus years ago, I really think I not only captured the differences in the transformations but how individuals evolved, how society evolved at the time. I also see how I evolved as a filmmaker, my worldview, my attitudes, my emotional state at the time, that you really see how I also evolved and transformed along with the characters I was capturing and also the society around me.
During the editing process, I not only wanted to support the narrative and tease out the narrative I wanted to create for this particular film, but I also paid attention to what’s behind the camera as a filmmaker. And how our emotional states, passion, and enthusiasm were when we were filming the sequences of the footage that we had gathered so long ago. And then using that as a way to also think about how I am going to create transitions, whether it’s through music or montage, to really create the balance of all these different elements, in front of the camera that we capture, or behind the camera of how we evolve as filmmakers.
Even during the most abstract sections of your film, returning to Zhao Tao’s protagonist is what gives us our emotional anchor. It’s an extraordinary performance. I’m curious how did your long working collaboration with her inform “Caught by the Tides“ and your overall approach?
I’ve been collaborating with Zhao Tao for many years, starting in 2001 with this particular project, and if I think about the way we collaborate, I can sort of pinpoint two different stages. In the first stage, when we started collaborating, she probably was more in the position of just (trying) to understand me and what I needed for the film, and as an actor, she would spontaneously and improvisationally provide what I needed for the film and for that particular scene. But then she evolved into someone that, especially later on, around 2005 or 2006, when we were working on the project “Still Life,“she became a collaborator with that we have frequent communications and collaboration in terms of character development. And I do think she brought a unique perspective, especially a female perspective, to the characters I have, and really broadened my viewpoint in terms of how complex the characters can be. (Again), especially through a female perspective.
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