The Shadowless Tower (2023) User Reviews

A sweet meditative quiet movie

[chenp-54708 · 8/10 · 16 December 2023]

Premiered back at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival.

Zhang Lu is a filmmaker I haven't been familiar with and I have seen some of his Korean works which I have enjoyed but didn't quite emotionally connect with, The Shadowless Tower might be my favorite one of his works so far.

Lu is able to portray a quiet yet meditative narrative about two wandering souls who search for something more within themselves with beautiful camerawork that captures the setting and atmosphere and interesting dialogue conversations between the characters. Many of the writing choices from Lu are interesting as it explores navigation of life, Chinese culture and cores between the soul.

All of the performances were pretty good as each performance enhances the realism of the setting. Including the child actor as well. The sound design is good, the characters are interesting and the pacing, while at times can be too slow, is engaging.

Overall, a really good movie.

12.31.2023

[EasonVonn · 4/10 · 1 January 2024]

I can sense that the director will be disappointed to see the reviews. Can't I beat you guys when I'm this literary?

The overall audio-visual language is close to that of a static movie by Edward Yang, almost no soundtrack, everything in life is a soundtrack, minimalist style, even some scenes reminiscent of neorealism, but the director does not know enough to be true to this point, but chose to utilize the outside of the painting to create a surrealistic view, but the roughness of the mastery of the degree of its feeling of a slight fatigue. It's like the product of a man in his middle age deliberately trying to portray that deep, lasciviousness that makes this film, which lacks a clear color composition, seem tedious; of course you can shoot it that way, and shoot it quite well, but you have to add some meaning to it, right?

Back to the outside of the painting, when Mr. Gu comes out of the painting, we can feel its transcendence in the back, which is a kind of frame beyond Hitchcock's closed space, because he can change the wholeness of time and space. The larger frame of the outside world is expanded indefinitely, and Mr. Gu also possesses an existence beyond the "uneasiness" of this frame. He can disappear and appear when the frame leaves him. He becomes infinite.

The foot-wrapping of the old woman is stinky and long, and the part of Tian Zhuangzhuang flying a kite is quite shocking, but I don't see much political meaning in it!