Caught by the Tides

This world is devoid of clear shapes and familiar forms. The posters are barely visible, the houses look unnaturally, and the sky, which on other days has no tangible structure, resembles the hasty brushstrokes of an aspiring artist. Only a nameless woman has a distinguishable contour: she is confidently moving towards her goal, and with every drop, the past years rush by.

As soon as she stops looking at something, long-lost events come to mind. The showcase, which hid several mannequins in fancy dresses, reminds us of the early 2000s. At that time, China looked like a rural teenager who, despite her disheveled appearance, had a promising future.

At that time, the woman was young and full of romantic aspirations. The rapid economic growth, which was daily recalled by the state media, promised a lot — prosperity, happiness and love. Many people sincerely believed that it is possible to make any wish come true if you wanted it bad enough. And yet dreams didn't fall from the sky; you had to make an effort to touch them.

Therefore, a woman born in an ordinary family and without an enviable dowry worked as a model, dancer and sang in small clubs. It was there, in a room filled with smoke and intoxicating smiles, that she realized her cherished fantasy — she found love that turned her heart into a fragrant flower and then knocked her down.

In those years, a man cared little about feelings; he was driven by vanity and a desire to demonstrate his own worth to others. There may have been flames in his chest too, but that heat wasn't enough. As a result, he quietly approached the top ten and set out to conquer a new province that beckoned with fascinating opportunities.

Initially, the man planned to settle in a new place and reunite with his beloved. At any rate, she heard him make these promises, but things were different. He fell into the millstones of a government initiative to build the world's largest hydroelectric power plant with a poetic name Three Gorges.

The implementation of such a large-scale project required sacrifices from the people. Tiny towns and entire cities were to be under water, but simply immersing their lives in the Yangtze reeked of treachery. So a man in the company of other workers had to demolish the homes of millions. Human lives turned into grains of sand that the wind of change carried to unknown lands.

The nuance is that the events described are not a complete part of the movie “Caught By The Tides”. During the recent pandemic, director Jia Zhangke faced a problem: to avoid an even greater catastrophe, China put an impressive part of cities under lock and key. This not only made it difficult to create new material, but also reminded us of the insignificance of an individual against the background of an era.

Archival footage saved Jia Zhangke. For the past twenty years, he has been filming the surrounding reality for the sake of banal interest. Walking around the city, eating with friends or a simple view from the window of a village house. While the main characters of Caught By The Tides were living their joys and tribulations, the director who came up with them did exactly the same thing.

As a result, unable to make a full-fledged movie from scratch, Jia Zhangke put together an impressive collage of his own works, both artistic and amateur. In a sense, he dissected the past and, like Dr. Frankenstein, created a fantasy out of it. Thus, fiction rose above reality.

Despite its fragmentary structure, “Caught By The Tides” has an amazing poetic integrity. At some point, a man and a woman dissolve in the surrounding events, but even the growing hum of eras pales in their feelings. It turns out that years devalue any material aspirations and achievements when love is not visible behind them.