An Elephant Sitting Still (2018) User Reviews

Honest and true cinema

[nikxatz · 9/10 · 3 May 2019]

"An Elephant Sitting Still" is a Chinese film crafted by Bo Hu, a new and impressively clever director, which chose to leave our dark and lonely world. And after watching his 4 hour film, which focus on one intense day in the lives of 4 individuals, who are living in a "wasteland" where crime and sadness and a constant dimness have the upper hand and they are searching for a way to escape from their troubles and the noises and the past. But will things change if we just go to another place or will confusion and lonelyness and animosity keep to exist in every step we make?

This film is astounding for many reasons. Firstly, despite its huge runtime of 230 minutes, the film is never of zero interest and has a immersive tone that lets you to grow with the characters and feel their emotions. The first hour may feel kind of slow beacause we do not get a lot of interactions and we basically meet our characters, their tragic lives and their hideous world they are struggling to live in. But, after they interact with each other and their stories crush onto one another, the film beacomes a true tour de force but it still remains delicate and quiet.

Also, the way the creator has built this enviroment is stylisticly satisfying and meanwhile it works well for the movies theme and for the characters. We are introduced to a dull, meaningless and dangerous pile of houses and desperate souls. We barely see a glanse of colour. Everything is grey, lifeless, moody and light only enters the frame from small windows or from cloudy skies. You probably thinking that this film is the most pessimistic thing on earth, but as it turns out, it isn't. Hu Bo is trying to be realistic and not a pessimist. Showing a dark dark world does not mean you are a pessimist, but instead it is a statement of how lowwe have fallen and of the tragedy of it all. It is what it is. The world is cruel and blunt, a bunch of kids bulling another one, students posting mean twits for a girl, an old man looking out of the window, a broken couple walking inside a train-tunnel. All of this helps us get into the characters emotions and understand them.

The acting is superb. Every actor feels like a real person.The characters are human and they are striking for salvation, but do not accept that these are their lives and they have to move on with reality even if it is bad. Each one of them is trappedi in their own heads. A man of guilt searching for forgiveness and love. A teenager trying to deal with an incient which brings danger to his life. A girl wanting to find a place to feel happy, but when she does everybody is judjing her. An elder man suffering from loss and trying to copmerhend that he is aging and decay, like all of us. In their eyes we see the same pain, the same sadness and the same grand desire of a better life, another situation, a small place to forget and rest, an elephant sitting still. They talk and play and observe and ache and get hurt and laugh and there is a beauty and intrigue to their lives.

The soundtrack is really one of a kind. At first, I really did not get it and it sounded really "off", but soon I started to understand it's purpose and I can actually say that it is a really distinct music and whenever I connect it to the film. The band is actualy is called Hualun and I heard some of other tracks and theyare actually pretty good.

And funally, the one and only reason why this film is so signicant in the world of art and also the reason to why I wrote this review is the fact that this film- is deeply honest. For me, honesty is the key to an enjoyable and meaningful film. Nowadays, every film feels like the same, uninteresting and repetative selling product. Every production company adds something for the fans to "Marvel" at, we get millions of toys and marchendise of dolls and clothes and they get more than a billion of money... but where is the soul, the authenticityc of the creators? To me , when I see a film want to "meet" the person behind it and take a look at his emotions and thoughts. The director must BE the film and the film MUST be the director. Cinema is made for people who want to speak, but use their films and not words, in order to express themselves. Hu Bo isa true director and artist and human.

He was a man who felt that the truly precious tihng are hidden in the cracks of the world and emphasizes that thisi is not pesimistic and if people leave their texts and fake happy realities behind and understand this, they may feel awe in front of the principles that define life.

He managed to use his experiences and create a story which purely portrays his inner self. It is like we met him and then he left. I have seen a lot of movies and only two directors have proven that they can make a film which shows their inner nature. The one is Charlie Kaufman, one of the best flmmakers working today, known for his work in "Synedoche, New Work" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", two of my favourite films. He once said that he feels sad because most directors do the smae job with politicans, trying to sell their works with saying and compaigns and they become pretenders and their films feel like a bunch of nothing. He is a filmmaking genius and you better check all of the iflms he had written and directed. The other one is Hu Bo. He is true and honest.

He is an ARTIST and he made a unique trumph for every person who walks on this world. It is beautiful and dark and sad and strange and complex and emotional and raw and honest and...

Thank you, Hu Bo.

The depression masterpiece

[wickedmikehampton · 9/10 · 26 December 2019]

'An Elephant Sitting Still' is the most underrated movie of 2019. Sure, artsy-fartsy critics raved about it but the mass public will never know it. After all, it's a 3hr50min slow moving, Chinese epic about depression. In a world of super heroes and Instagram, patience is considered a handicap. Thankfully, there's an elephant of sadness and irony. It was the only movie by Bo Hu, the director and writer. He killed himself afterwards, ensuring that it'll become a cult classic, the greatest suicide 'letter'.

Ordinary people dealing with their lives in the best way they know how.

[Amyth47 · 8/10 · 5 January 2019]

My Rating : 8/10

'An Elephant Sitting Still' - what can be said about this masterpiece? At 3 hours 50 minutes it's not something one can rush through. It requires patience and empathy from the viewer. There's no way any normal moviegoer will not find it boring and dull at times but that's where you've gotta find that right mood and environment to really appreciate this gem. This is definitely an acquired taste.

I am a huge fan of movies that deal with inner torment and involve the viewer's absolute trust and surrender. Cries and Whispers, Ida, Mouchette, Stray, The Piano Teacher, In My Father's Den are some of my favourites when it comes to this type of cinema and now 'An Elephant Sitting Still' can be added to this list as well.

Sad to know that the director is no more. R.I.P. and thank you for sending this message out to the world.

This is not just a movie

[paulmfm · 10/10 · 20 November 2018]

I cannot comprehend how this movie can be so beautifully shot, staged and acted, while on the other hand depicting the ugliest but so true to life experiences a human could ever possibly encounter. Not a single spark of hope ever comes up during the entire film, every character experiences his own version of hell while trying to find meaning in their appently meaningless lifes. Nobody smiles, everyone wears a thick winter coat.. even inside as if they need an extra shell to protect them from other humans. And yet, after four hours you are left with the urge to tell the world that there is still something worth living for. This movie is a plea for more kindness and humanity, although it is almost never showing either of them itself. A movie has never affected me so deeply like this one. I will never forget this experience and I am sorry for the directors relatives.. they, the Chinese Cinema and we all have lost a true filmmaking genius.

Deeply Human

[gonch-68899 · 10/10 · 24 February 2018]

Few debuts are this good. Throughout four hours, Hu Bei creates an overwhelminly human and sensitive film, creating characters to which we deeply sympathise and connect with. The more the film moves long, the more impactful it becomes, and soon enough even the smallest actions, the most simple scenes become huge, due to the sheer emotional investment the spectator has. This works mostly for these reasons: Bei's camera, which is always close to the characters, following them in long, some times astonishing shots; the actors, all of them astounding; the long running time, which gives time not just to explore each character, but also for the viewer to just spend time with these people, who we love to care about so deeply. Melancholic but not sad, deeply moving but never sentimental, An Elephant Sitting Still doesn't feel bigger than life: it feels like life, period. To call it a masterpiece would be an understatement.

An Epiphany, or an Elephant

[ncweil · 10/10 · 7 November 2018]

An Elephant Sitting Still, a 2018 Chinese film by Hu Bo, just under 4 hours long, enters the lives of four people and those who impact them. First we have a high school student, Wei Bu. His parents constantly berate him, telling him he should go live with his grandma - he would, but her apartment has no heat. His friend has crossed the school bully, so Wei Bu backs him up, believing he didn't steal the bigger boy's cellphone. They meet in a stairwell to have it out, and the bully attacks Wei Bu for interfering. In a shoving match, the bully falls down the cement stairs, badly injured.

The next character, Yu Cheng, older brother of the bully, listens to his best friend's story about an elephant at the circus in Manjhouli: the elephant just sits there, even if people stab it with forks. Then Yu Cheng is caught sleeping with the friend's wife, but his friend rather than attacking him leaps from the high apartment window to his death. It's not Yu Cheng's fault - but if he hadn't been in his friend's girl's bedroom, it wouldn't have happened.

Wei Bu likes a girl, Huang Ling, but she rebuffs him - she's having a soon-to-be-revealed affair with the married Vice Dean at their high school. This man tells Wei Bu that their school, the worst in the city, is closing. "What will we do?" Wei Bu asks. "You'll be street vendors," says the Vice Dean, who then goes on to talk about the larger office he's looking forward to in the school he'll be transferred to. Huang Ling lives with her single mother, who drinks, complains, and lies around while the toilet overflows. Their hatred is mutual.

And last, we have Wang Jin, living with his daughter, her husband, and their young daughter. They want to move to another district for its better school, but apartments there are smaller and more expensive, so they'd like Grandpa to move to the nursing home. He tells them the place won't allow dogs, and besides, they're all living in his apartment. But he can see what's coming.

Everyone in this film is angry - with each other, with their lives - and most of them blame someone else for their unhappiness. Love and affection are in very short supply in this industrial city where we only catch rare glimpses of anything not man-made - a river valley one can look down on from a high overpass, a clump of weeds. And the built world is unattractive - rubble outside buildings, an abundance of concrete and rusty iron.

Misfortune caroms like a billiard ball, striking one person who strikes another who strikes a third - the only ones able to rise above the attack-and-blame cycle are those who have their thoughts on other things - Wei Bu escapes murder by telling Yu Cheng, who feels duty-bound to avenge his "piece of garbage" brother's death, about wanting to go to Manjhouli to see the elephant sitting still. That's really what Yu Cheng wants too - he despises his own thug life, but sees no alternative.

As we spend hours with these characters, their families, their enemies, we get to know each as an individual - whatever they do, harmless or evil, they are aware of it, and aware too of a sense of being trapped. And in the end, there is an epiphany, or an elephant. If you're one of those rare filmgoers who looks forward to spending four hours with a story, this one's for you! It won Best Feature Award at the Berlin Film Festival, so you might get a chance - at a film festival. Keep your eye out for it.

Meaning of life

[AamirKhanHossain · 10/10 · 10 May 2022]

The first and last film from "Bo Hu", is one of the great chinese film from mainland china.

When people lost the reason of living, when they feel there's nothing for them. The world they loved, the people they believed is no more there, the life is meaningless. The only think they can think is to die, this film show that stage of four peoples. How they find new meaning of life.

After watching this film I couldn't believed It's Chinese film. The storytelling, the cinematography, the acting, all the sectors is so unique that I just couldn't believed It's Chinese film.

As far as I can say it's the year best film.

A nihilistic slog with little reward

[TheDonaldofDoom · 6/10 · 23 January 2019]

"An Elephant Sitting Still" is a hard film to think about, let alone write about. I went in expecting to see something depressing yet captivating and cathartic. The experience was in reality something far harder to engage with. Apart from the occasional musical relief, it is deathly quiet. The characters rarely smile, and even when they do it's only to laugh at the almost poetic awfulness of their predicaments. They are usually aggressive to each other, but rarely shout. Even when something bad happens, there is no melodramatic outcry; people simply carry on as if nothing matters. And all of this is enveloped, with no respite, in a wasteland that offers no visual relief. This film is utterly depressing to watch, not in a positive way but because it feels, until close to the end, like the product of someone with a completely nihilistic worldview.

The visuals only serve to reinforce the film's gloominess. The tone can be described as a dull grey, a grey you see everywhere. In the dilapidated buildings, in the roads, in the sky, in the camera's filter... and in the people. It shows, I suppose, just how much an environment can affect behaviour. The characters in the film have no hope (aside from their desire to escape) and it's no wonder given the drab skyline. There is a stark beauty in a showdown scene near the end of the film that takes place by a railway line. The whole scene is brilliantly shot and great from a character perspective too. As the camera moves to show the landscape, I'm struck with one of the few truly great visual moments of the film.

People's troubles are compounded by the way they treat each other, always shouting, always assuming the worst of each other whether it's the bully who thinks a colleague has stolen his phone or a boy's own family being suspicious of him. You can't help but think that if people helped each other a bit more they might end up a little bit happier. It's also hard not to notice how much people's lives are dictated by money. Whether it's a broken desk, a cue or a dead dog, money is what people assume others want. Not an apology, or an act of kindness, but money. This I think illustrates Hu Bo's cynicism about society - people go on living but they don't live for anything. They don't want to know that an act of kindness can be worth more than Yuan.

One way to read Elephant is as a commentary on the urban decay specific to China, but you can also see it as existential. If it is existential rather than relating specifically to local problems, then it is even more depressing as it seems as if Hu Bo had nothing optimistic to say about our existence at all. If the camera is a sort of character, what that character feels is an emptiness as strong as the characters themselves. And this is where my major problem with Elephant lies. If you want to show something about your characters, you shouldn't give the camera the same personality as your characters. But that is exactly what Hu Bo does, infusing it with the same nihilism as he infuses his characters. It means the impression of this film is rather one-note. Yes, it has lots to say, but despite seeming to point out the characters' problems are often a result of their own outlook, for most of the duration of the film Hu Bo adopts the same nihilistic outlook as his characters.

The lack of nuance extends to some of the scenes most intended to be shocking. There is a clear intention to get across the hopelessness and unkindness of its characters but the hilariously unnuanced way the script is written creates the opposite feeling of the viewer to that which is intended. This is most obvious during a mother-daughter argument that turns into a hilariously overplayed slurry of insults. It's not distressing to watch; it's cringeworthy! Other times, people cry about how awful the world is and I find myself wondering if Hu Bo couldn't have been a bit more subtle in conveying his existential ideas.

Every character is the same, and once you understand them there isn't that much more to learn, certainly not enough to justify the four-hour runtime. Throughout the film, the performances don't add any more nuance to the characterisation. If it wasn't for the fact that they looked different, I wouldn't be able to tell the characters apart by their acting, dialogue or behaviour.

There is some positivity to be gleaned from this film if you look for it. Although there are things the characters endure that they cannot change, the way they treat each other makes their suffering worse. If they treated each other a little bit better, they might all be a bit happier. A discussion near the end, in which someone reveals that wherever you go, it doesn't get any better, hints at that the problem, ultimately, is with you. Most optimistic in my eyes is the final shot, seeing the characters get off the bus and kick a ball around. It feels like a hint that they may finally have realised that fact of life. Ultimately though, the journey to that conclusion is a clunky one. Throughout the four-hour film there is no hint of the tonal swerve until the final twenty minutes. Thus it's a very imperfect film, even if it is a heartfelt one. I would have loved to see where Hu Bo would go from here as he displayed some great filmmaking, but unfortunately we won't ever know.

Really great and very depressing.

[mahmus · 9/10 · 12 August 2020]

It might be slow, but not boring. Plus, when it picks up, it really picks up. It's beautifuly directed and it's hard to take your eyes away from it.

I love the atmosphere of this film. It all feels wierdly familiar. I can feels the cold air. I can smell the environment. The closing scenes in particular I think will evoke an odd sense of nostalgia in a lot of people. The fact that almost every scene is shot in long takes makes it even more immersive.

It can drag quite a bit at times. With a runtine of almost four hours and a pace so slow it would make Andrei Tarkovsky jealous, it was always going to drag, but it never stops being completely entrancing and heartbreaking.

This is a must-watch.

Four Hour Cry of Anguish

[evanston_dad · 7/10 · 19 March 2020]

"An Elephant Sitting Still" is clearly a very personal film, a little too personal perhaps. It's a four-hour cry of anguish from a director who sadly took his own life shortly after the film was completed. No wonder then that the film has such a preoccupation with suicide.

Knowing the film's backstory makes it hard to be critical of it, but if I'm being honest I found my patience greatly tried by this one. It's misery porn at its most miserable, and it simply did not need to be so long. There's no break to the relentless drabness of it, and it's so depressing that it almost teeters into comical. After awhile, when faced with something as downbeat as this, you have no choice but to start finding it absurd that so much misery (including no fewer than three deaths) could possibly land on four interrelated people in the space of one day.

It seems heartless and pointless to criticize "An Elephant Sitting Still" for being undisciplined given the fate of its director, but that's what it is. It's an internal monologue from the perspective of someone who's clearly not well, and it teases us with the heartbreaking potential of its young filmmaker, because formally it's a very impressive movie, but it simply didn't have anything to say to me other than life is a pointless wallow in despair, which is not at all what I believe.

Grade: B

One of those 'Must See' Movies....

[safsurfer · 10/10 · 2 July 2019]

I just watched 'An Elephant Sitting Still' and all I've got to say is 'mesmerizing'. Such a rhythmic flow to each and every scene, not only visually stunning but the dialog and sound track were amazing, and that combination effortlessly flowed scene to scene. The sound track at times seemed like it was just pulled right out of the background noise of the scenery and then mixed into a rhythm and fed back into the beat of the movie and flipping vice-versa.....just brilliant. 'An Elephant Sitting Still' is a true masterpiece of creative genius, reminding me a lot of Bela Tarr films. Very long takes, endlessly long, and with endless dialog at times, that almost seems improvised, and just as endless emptiness at times, head spinning. Qian's camera follows the characters around closely, circling them, moving between them and flowing like water around them, almost like another character, and at times I swore it had dialog as if to be another character itself...lol. The camera work was some of the best ever. Whoever drove that steadi-cam earned their pay for sure. For a long 4 hr movie that really didn't have a plot, it never lost my attention or made me fast forward. This was more of a theme type movie, a day in the life, with lots of characters to follow as they intermingle and meander through what seem to be deeply agonizing lives in search of something better or simply left content in their misery. All of the actors were spot on and it seemed like real life was being filmed and put up on the screen. This movie goes right on the same list as 'Satantango', 'Werckmeister Harmonies', 'Capernaum', 'The Tiger: An Old Hunter's Tale', and 'The World of Kanako'. Very sad the director took his own life after making this film.

A very remarkable debut

[frankde-jong · 7/10 · 10 June 2019]

Recently we read a lot in the newspapers about the trade war between the US and China and the fact that it won't take long before China is the biggest economy in the World.

In "An elephant sitting still" the emphasis is not so much on the economic performance of China but on the environmental disaster that is taking place. The film is set in a dreary landscape, fog is always present and grey is the dominating colour.

There is not only an environmental disaster going on but also a social one. Most of the people we meet in this film are selfish, indifferent, corrupt and harsh. Maybe they weren't born that way, but in the society portrayed by this movie, in order to survive you can't afford te be sensitive. After finishing this movie the (debuting) director committed suicide. The direct cause was a conflict with the producer over the length of the film, but after seeing the film it is difficult to seperate his suicide from the totally dark image of Chinese society in the film.

"An elephant sitting still" is an ensemble film. We follow the lives of four main characters during one day. Contrary to for example "Magnolia" (1999, Paul Thomas Anderson) there is no redemption at a deathbed at the end of the film here. One main character compares his life with a garbage bin. The older he gets, the more garbage he collects.

In "Magnolia" there is a mythical element at the end in the form of a shower of frogs. "An elephant sitting still" has its own mythical element. At the eind of the film we hear the trumpeting of the elephant (without seeing the animal).

Up to that moment there was only talk about a circus elephant that went on strike and did nothing else than sitting in his cage. It is up to each viewer to interpret the symbolic meaning of this elephant, but in China an elephant is seen as a wise animal and the lethargy to wich he had fallen can be seen as a protest agianst the harshness of the society portrayed in the film.

For me there was clear link between the elephant in "An elephant sitting still" and the whale in "Werckmeister Harmoniak" (2000, Bela Tarr). A link that beomes even more obvious when I red (after seeing the film) that Bela Tarr was one of the guest teachers of directer Bo Hu.

Dark, beautiful, mesmerizing.

[Toma11 · 12 September 2019]

This is dark, slow, atmospheric drama. There is only one scene that I do not like because of slow pace and that is (no spoilers) when movie is showing rooms from right to left and between rooms there is of course walls and I do not want to look at walls for many seconds but I did, because it is slow paced movie. With all other scenes slowness of the movie is good thing and it is one of those things that makes it great movie. Acting is perfect, I can not imagine better acting. Movie is cruel, there is no much gore and violence. It is story of characters that is cruel and after some time in the movie you do not expect any kind of kindness in the movie and when it actually happens I was pleasently surprised. It is slow, dark, drama, if you do not like these three words do not watch the movie. It is utterly fantastic movie. It is one of those movies that I will not forget, and there is no doubt that I will watch it at least one more time.

Good Enough

[PennyReviews · 5/10 · 21 November 2018]

This one is a long long one. Four hours length, with a simple yet realistic story about people who see their lives being ruined and try to hope. I can't say that the story kept me interested throughout its huge length. Sometimes it felt like nothing was happening. It was like watching a documentary. It did pick up eventually. The ending was kind of odd too. But overall the performances were really good from all the characters who's lives were tangled together somehow. So, five out of ten.

An eternal Masterpiece

[bitnoir · 10/10 · 18 February 2020]

If someone asked me to pick just one film as my best for the past decade, this would definitely be my first choice

Bleak Yet Boldly Beautiful

[kaideneve · 10/10 · 4 October 2021]

It's not often that you get superb film viewing experiences like this, and with a nearly 4 hour runtime, it's worth every minute. This film doesn't rush anything, and allows you to deeply soak in the feelings and emotions of each character in the story as it slowly develops over the course of a single day.

The acting is also truly exceptional from every character. What a powerhouse cast. The listless expressions are as cold and bleak as the surrounding Northern Chinese city where the film is set.

The subtle soundtrack comes in at the perfect times throughout to provide a quaint accompaniment to certain scenes. A great study in minimalist sound design where less is so much more.

Most memorable was the cinematography here. Just gorgeous shots everywhere, and I can only imagine the amount of thought that went into piecing together this work of art. Truly exceptional work that should not be missed by any cinephile.

Wake-up Call

[Blue-Grotto · 9/10 · 25 December 2019]

An Elephant Sitting Still (China, Hu Bo, 2018) - High rise apartment towers across the horizon, relentless walls of concrete, ceaseless din of traffic, consuming smog, darkness, indifferent eyes and a once wild elephant pacing back and forth in chains; modern China in a nutshell. Each character of An Elephant Sitting Still mirrors the gigantic nation. Confessions of pain met with hostility and suspicion, relationships without love, heartlessness, veiled threats, unhappiness and all characters - young and old, male and female - in limbo, alienated and alone.

After completing this bleak film the director, 29 years old, killed himself. It is a four-hour testament to what the lack of hope feels like. The scenes, characters and stories melt into each other. The camerawork is up close and personal, and it seems like a continuous take. The ambient sound of traffic is occasionally broken by calming electronic music. Having recently been to China I experienced some of the concrete, indifference and cruelty envisioned here by Hu Bo. Yet I also witnessed wonders and beauty in the natural world, city streets and people's hearts that provide perspective and counter points to all the misery. In this sense An Elephant Sitting Still is a wakeup call to what we might become unless we can harness our better instincts and natures. As such the film is wonderful, insightful and mesmerizing. Four and a half of five stars.

As close as you can get...

[JosWiel · 8/10 · 12 June 2019]

This is as close as you can get to real Chinese life. Having lived in China for almost 20 years myself, watching this movie came as a shock of recognition, while refusing to admit this IS reality at the bottom of the modern Chinese society. A remarkable accomplishment of director Hu Bo who must have witnessed this kind of life himself. It's intriguing to see the camera following all the main characters from up close with their environment at a blurred and vague distance behind. I can't recall having seen any movie this gloomy and depressing with no way to escape from this messy and dehumanized society.

True, some scenes wouldn't occur in real life. Where Wei Bu addresses old Wang Jin to give him money in exchange for his cue, anyone in China would ignore this or simply react with distrust. Yet it's functional within Hu Bo's story of the intermingled lives of the 4 main characters. Huang Ling, a young female student, tries to make the best out of her life but can't resist the temptation of dating her teacher who comforts her with a caring and human approach, so different from her bullyishing and hateful mother. In real life Chinese mothers would still use and not waste their daughters in their struggle with a hostile world.

With this movie Hu Bo delivers a message that reads like manifest, showing a city that slowly degrades and where hope is lost for those living inside. Becoming street sellers is the final destiny of young people who experience only detachment from their parents where anger and punishment rules the relation and love and respect becomes a rarity. Yet hope flares up when brave student Wu Bo resists to accept his humiliation and presents an a oddly wish to escape his life, tempting others to do the same in search for a sitting elephant at the border town Manzhouli, a nearly 2000 km away from their town, an absurd detail mainland Chinese wouldn't miss.

We can only imagine how personally director Hu Bo was involved with his last movie, as we try to comprehend why he took his life just after completing his movie, even before it's official release. Yes, there was a dispute with his producer about the length of the movie, a nearly 4 hours, a tiring challenge for any viewer, while 2 hours would be sufficient to portray the essential content of the film. But Hu Bo wasn't' about to compromise, unfortunately. Therefore, see his full version as a tribute to him.

Nietzsche would have smiled at this film.

[JuguAbraham · 7/10 · 2 November 2018]

There are several reasons why you will not forget this film if you have had the patience to sit through the 4 hours of its slow running time. One of them will be to wonder if the long film was worth your while.

The director Bo Hu only made this feature film in his entire life before he committed suicide at age 29. The film is based on his book that he wrote under a pen-name. With a book and a feature film to his credit, Bo Hu evidently still felt trapped.

All the characters are innocent but nihilistic to the core caught within China's social "no-win" trap if you are not rich or have political connections. Nietzsche would have smiled at this film. There is no way out. Yet they hope optimistically for a better life. It is a curious film that ends up with stupid violent scenes as some recent award-winning films from China have. Nothing positive to take away here after 4 hours. The concept of the elephant sitting still is possibly positive, which is why four adults want to metaphorically see it. One positive takeaway in the indirect commentary on China today, rarely discussed in the media.

Bleak, negative and hopeless

[saraccan · 8/10 · 6 October 2019]

It has very nice cinematography that captures the averageness of the characters. Extremely good single shot takes that adds realism to the events and conversations. Really good acting and a simple yet effective storyline. Can't say I loved the music.

This is a realistic movie that shows 4 lower-middle class people in China and their bleak, negative and hopeless lives.

Style over substance

[Turin_Horse · 7/10 · 19 September 2019]

Four hours is too long for me to watch a film all at once, so I went two alternate days to watch the first and second halves of the film, and neither of the two days I came out fully convinced of what I had seen. I enjoyed the style, the introversion mood that permeates all the scenes, depicted in close shots of the characters' heads with a usually blurry background; it seems the intention is that you perceive the world through the minds of the characters, yet this is a failed attempt often since the situational context does not manage to tell you much about what's inside the characters' minds. Conversations do not manage to solve this problem and to provide some more information on each character's perspectives, they are scarce and tend to be superficial, adding little for the comprehension of their attitudes to life (bleak without exception). This is one of the main problems of this film, the poor dialogues, although maybe a good deal is lost in the translation and they are more meaningful in Chinese.

Basically the film brings together a group of interrelated personages which experience (and sometimes cause) in the course of a single day all the imaginable sufferings a human being can pass through: loneliness, family tensions and conflicts, indiference from others and your own relatives, public exposure of awkward secrets, accidental killing, death of a relative, suicide, adultery, lies, scams, violence in different degrees, including shooting... Obviously there is no realistic intention in the development of the plot, instead all these misfortunes are piled up together to explicitly show how awful life is, something that is also bluntly expressed by some of the characters during the film... I would have expected this was transmited with some more subtetly.

Unfortunately we will not be able to see more films from this director, sadly he decided to follow the fate of one of the characters (at least) in the film. He seems to have fully exposed his view of life in this film, and then act accordingly. May he find now the harmony of mind he apparently could not get during his short life, and rest in peace.

The long and short of it

[ernestsavesxmas · 9/10 · 22 October 2019]

A beautiful barnburner by a budding auteur, gone too soon. The director Hu Bo committed suicide in 2017 soon after finishing filming this and it's difficult to parse that fact from any viewing/reading of An Elephant Sitting Still. Hu Bo's death came under cloudy circumstances allegedly related to conflicts with the producers of the film. He was just 29. This was his first film after writing two novels also released in 2017. We're left with a four-hour cut of a slow and sprawling, tonally bleak story told through the vantage point of several characters dealing with big philosophical problems. Given what little information there is coming out of China about Hu Bo, his life, his art, his process, his death, we're left with pretty much just the 234 minutes here. And while that's a lot, and for many perhaps, too much, it's just a fragment in reality. Consider the fleeting nature of time, be it with lovely long shots captured by handheld cameras set to a post-rock score, or by the real mystery of a suicide by a young, talented person. This films weaves together the fabric of four characters over the course of a single day, and in doing so creates something much larger for us to ponder.

One of the best Chinese-language films ever

[TheBigSick · 22 November 2018]

I cannot understand why the writer-director of this film committed suicide. Obviously he shows a great potential in this very professional directorial debut, which reminds me of Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Jiang Wen on their directorial debuts. The mind-blowing screenplay, bitingly cold theme, atmospheric approach, stunning cinematography and economic direction are just speechless. It is four-hours long, but once you start watching, you would never stop until the finish.

Obscure and too many useless details.

[yoggwork · 6/10 · 18 February 2019]

It's a model that's hard to live up to. Unscrupulously piling up meaningless fixed-frame lenses stretched the story of one hour's exhaustion to four hours. Several problematic families are depicted at the beginning, but the final problem is still there, because this film only needs the oppressive atmosphere, not to reflect or solve some problems. Does this film have love? Maybe, but it's not clear, and it shouldn't be so.

Boring, Long, and Miserable

[RCBP_Collection · 1/10 · 2 March 2020]

I had jokingly messaged a friend, in between watching the first and second halves, that the film made me want to either fall asleep or kill myself. The characters are not only miserable, but pathetic, self-involved, and lack any sense of joy, passion, wonder or love. The pace is excruciatingly slow, and at almost 4 hours, unreasonably long. I thought it was pretentiously depressing. On this last point, I guess I was wrong.

I was very sorry to find the dedication at the end of this film to the young writer/director Hu Bo, and to read later that he had committed suicide. But I cannot say I was surprised. In retrospect, I realized that the misery he depicted in this film reflects how he truly viewed the world. Poor man.

This might explain the awards and rave reviews, as Hu Bo's suicide makes people unable to judge the film dispassionately. It makes us realize that we are getting a sincere message from the mind of a clinically depressed man.

However, judging the film entirely on its own merits, I stand by my one star rating. It is excruciating to watch, and lacks any engaging character, or moments of entertainment, enlightenment, pleasure, or inspiration. Instead, it does the opposite, saying over and over that life is just agony, nothing else. Though it may have been his honest view, it is the very limited view of a sadly twisted mind. It is worse than nothing, it is harmful and untrue. People are not just wretched, selfish and nothing else, even if Hu Bo couldn't see it.

I am sorry I wasted 4 hours of my life on this, and I would never recommend this movie to anyone else.