AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL

One of the cinema events of the year! The only full-length movie by Chinese novelist turned filmmaker Hu Bo saw its legend enhanced when the 29-year-old artist killed himself after finishing his movie. Set in a northern Chinese industrial city, Hu’s nearly four-hour work focuses on four individuals—a bullied teen, a female classmate having an affair with a school administrator, a pensioner being forced out of his home, and a local gangster—whose dead-end lives overlap and intersect during the course of one day. Teeming with long tracking shots (Hungarian master Béla Tarr was Hu’s mentor), the film has a decidedly melancholy air that is alleviated by barbed humor. “One of the greatest recent films…A masterwork.” –The New Yorker. Subtitles. DCP. 230 min.