Mountains May Depart

MOVIE #1,126 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 08.28.23 PART OF THE JIA ZHANGKE DIRECTOR FOCUS This one is pretty great until the final act, which is baffling and more than a bit goofy. The aesthetic vision of 2025 from the perspective of 2015 aside, this segment features some of the most head-scratching dialogue we’ve ever seen in a Jia Zhangke film (a line like “it’s as if Google Translate is your real son” is overtly bad, while something like “now that I can legally own guns, I have nothing to shoot at” is subtly bad). Also, while I generally appreciate how flippant J.Z. is with the narrative, following and ditching characters on a whim, here it’s a detriment. The character of Liangzi is essentially an afterthought at every turn, existing solely as a counterpoint to a life that Zhao Tao might have had, and even as that it feels slight and unnecessary (like he couldn’t possibly tell a story without somebody existing on the lower rung).

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,125 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,127 ⫸

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Mountains May Depart (Chinese: 山河故人) is a 2015 Mandarin-language drama and the 8th feature film directed by Jia Zhangke. It competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and was also selected to be shown in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. It was released on May 20, 2015.