Mountains May Depart

Mountains May Depart (Chinese: 山河故人) is a 2015 Mandarin-language drama film directed by Jia Zhangke. The film is Jia's eighth feature film.[3][4] It competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.[5][6] It has also been selected to be shown in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.[7] It was released in China on 30 October 2015.[1]

Mountains May Depart
Chinese山河故人
MandarinShānhé gùrén
LiterallyOld Man of the Mountain River
Directed byJia Zhangke
Produced byRen Zhonglun
Nathanaël Karmitz
Liu Shiyu
Shozo Ichiyama
Written byJia Zhangke
StarringZhao Tao
Zhang Yi
Liang Jingdong
Dong Zijian
Music byYoshihiro Hanno
CinematographyYu Lik Wai
Edited byMatthieu Laclau
Production
companies
Xstream Pictures
Shanghai Film Group
MK2
Distributed bySihai Distribution Association (China)[1]
Tianjin Maoyan Media (China)[1]
Ad Vitam (France)
Release date
  • 20 May 2015 (2015-05-20) (Cannes)
  • 30 October 2015 (2015-10-30) (China)
  • 23 December 2015 (2015-12-23) (France)
  • 23 April 2016 (2016-04-23) (Japan)
Running time
131 minutes
CountryChina
France
Japan
LanguageMandarin
Box officeCN¥32.22 million (China)
US$79,768 (United States)[2]

Plot

The film is divided into three parts. The first part is set in the medium-sized town of Fenyang (in the northern Shanxi province) in 1999. 25-year-old shopkeeper Tao (Zhao Tao) is torn between two suitors. Jinsheng (Zhang Yi) is a well-off gas station owner whom she has little connection with but could drastically improve her material living conditions. She feels closer to Liangzi (Liang Jingdong), a poor laborer in a local coal mine. When confronted by both men, Tao decides to marry Jinsheng in the hope of leaving Fenyang.

In 2014, Tao is now divorced from Jinsheng and still living in Fenyang, running the prosperous gas station and being a prominent and generous woman in the city. Jinsheng has since remarried and lives in Shanghai, and has become wealthy from investments. Liangzi works as a miner near Handan, in the neighboring province of Hebei, and has gotten ill. Most of the second act focuses on Tao and Jinsheng's son, Daole (pronounced Dollar in English) aged 7, who comes to visit her for the funeral of her father. Tao is upset by Daole's distance, which she acknowledges is due to their cultural differences - a product of Jinsheng's fascination with globalization. Tao, knowing they are fated to be apart, decides to ride the slow train with Daole, instead of sending him on a plane back to Shanghai. As a parting gift, Tao makes Daole a set of keys for her house so that he can return to his mother's home whenever he wants.

In 2025, Daole (now currently called Dollar) is attending college in Australia. He is constantly fighting with his father over his desire to drop out of college and have the freedom he was never granted in his childhood. He meets Mia, his Chinese language teacher, an older woman for whom he develops feelings and eventually begins a relationship with. Dollar shares with Mia how he still carries the keys his mother gave him when he was a young boy, and that he fears she may die, even though they have not talked for years. Mia convinces him to fly back to China with her so that he can see Tao. The film ends with Tao dancing to "Go West", recalling the beginning of the film when, as a young woman, she was dancing merrily with all of her then fellows (making waves with their arms, "wave" being incidentally the translation of the first name "Tao" in English), full of hope for a better life. Any reunion with Daole (Dollar) is not seen.

Cast

Reception

Box office

The film earned CN¥32.22 million at the Chinese box office.[1]

Critical reception

Mountains May Depart holds a 79/100 average on review aggregation site Metacritic.[9] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote, "Jia Zhang-ke’s Mountains May Depart is a mysterious and in its way staggeringly ambitious piece of work from a film-maker whose creativity is evolving before our eyes."[10]

Scott Foundas of Variety states "Mountains May Depart is never less than a work of soaring ambition and deeply felt humanism, as Jia longs not so much to turn back the hands of time, but to ever so slightly slow them down."[11]

Derek Elley of Film Business Asia gave it a 5 out of 10, calling the film a "weakly written saga of friendship [that] goes way off the rails in the final part."[12]

Music

Go West plays a prominent role in the film, as the film opens to a scene on New Year's Eve 1999 with Tao dancing to the song and closes in 2025 with a scene of Tao crying and dancing to the song near the old pagoda. In an interview with AV Club Zhangke states that he was attempting to evoke a "collective history for that generation."[14]

References
  1. "山河故人（2015）". cbooo.cn (in Chinese). Retrieved 15 February 2016.
  2. "Mountains May Depart". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 15 February 2016.
  3. "山河故人 (2015)". movie.douban.com (in Chinese). douban.com. Retrieved 13 February 2015.
  4. Kevin Ma (13 February 2015). "Shanghai Film Group reveals forthcoming projects". Film Business Asia. Archived from the original on 13 February 2015. Retrieved 13 February 2015.
  5. "2015 Official Selection". Cannes. Retrieved 16 April 2015.
  6. "Screenings Guide". Festival de Cannes. 6 May 2015. Retrieved 8 May 2015.
  7. "Toronto to open with 'Demolition'; world premieres for 'Trumbo', 'The Program'". ScreenDaily. 28 July 2015. Retrieved 28 July 2015.
  8. Patrick Frater (19 May 2014). "China's Jia Zhangke Plans 'Mountains' Trek (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved 13 February 2015.
  9. "Mountains May Depart Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 24 January 2016.
  10. Peter Bradshaw (20 May 2015). "Mountains May Depart review: Jia Zhang-ke scales new heights with futurist drama". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 May 2015.
  11. Scott Foundas (19 May 2015). "Cannes Film Review: 'Mountains May Depart'". Variety. Retrieved 25 May 2015.
  12. Derek Elley (21 May 2015). "Mountains May Depart". Film Business Asia. Retrieved 24 May 2015.
  13. (in French) Antoine Duplan, "« Au-delà des montagnes » : l’argent ne fait pas le bonheur de la Chine", Le Temps, Tuesday 26 January 2016 (page visited on 3 February 2016).
  14. Vishnevetsky, Ignatiy. "Director Jia Zhangke on technology, relationships, and Pet Shop Boys". Film. Retrieved 4 April 2018.
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