Although 2016 is not even halfway done, one of the year’s most affecting powerhouse performances has been making a quiet rumble in limited markets after hitting last year’s festival circuit. There are many confounding elements to unpack in Jia Zhangke’s Mountains May Depart, whether it be its framing methods or its extended prologue, but Zhao Tao’s masterful performance is what makes the film a momentous achievement for Zhangke’s career. Starting last year at Cannes, audiences have been immediately enthralled by the youthful and perky dance instructor who lights up the first sequence of Mountains May Depart. Where other actors would reduce Shen Tao, the character who happens to be named after the actress, to a charming simplicity, Zhao makes her character her own and embraces a whole range of characterizations and flaws that a woman would encounter in 25 tumultuous years of life.

Shen’s evolution through the film is visible through the three distinct acts that encompass Mountains May Depart. Her character grows in the short time spans that are presented as obstacles are thrown in front of her, but her maturation is increasingly visible in 1999, 2014 and 2025. Many characters affect Shen’s life through the years, but she commands the story and the screen. Despite Mountains May Depart’s point-of-view being omniscient, it lives through the eyes of Shen, and the film excels when the focus is on her. Zhao molds Shen into a fully fleshed out human with complex traits that follow her whole life while displaying a childlike wonderment, maternal jealousy, and sweet sentimentally in each respective time period.

In the first act, Zhao portrays Shen with an ingenuity and innocence. She is introduced with Liangzhi, portrayed by Jing Dong Liang, but she quickly hops over to Jinsheng, portrayed by Yi Zhang. Shen balances the two men in her life selfishly, picking between which one has more to offer her. Yet, because Zhao is such a master actress, Shen never comes off as unpleasant or less than endearing. In fact, this selfishness, which is present throughout the film, only paints her as more relatable and grounded.

Zhao plays Shen with a lot of reservation in the first act, whether it be about choosing a man or the way she takes in her surroundings. This reservation results in a quiet performance, full of nuances and gestures. Even as the two men have conversations, it is hard for one to take their eyes off of Shen—her eyes twinkle, her mouth twitches, her face engages. The performance is even realized in the tiniest moments, like when Shen softly hears a Cantonese song and is deeply affected by it. In many ways, Zhao diminishes Shen’s age. She represents youthfulness and abandonment, willing to live her own life no matter what comes her way.

In the second act, Shen is noticeably older and more demure, but her life is even more uncertain. Shen’s life takes a left turn between the two time periods, leaving her matured in both life experience and presence. At the opening of the second act, Zhao is often found with a soft smile that alludes to a deeper feeling of discontent.

It is the relationship with her son Dollar which really drives home the duality of Zhao’s performance. Zhao is given a chance to be more emotive in the second act since her sans souci attitude is replaced with grief. As the act progresses, Zhao opens herself up to hit the highs and lows of an emotionally susceptible woman, stuck between motherhood and daughterhood. Until Dollar becomes more involved in the story, Zhao always plays Shen as someone comfortable in her own skin, but she struggles as someone else takes a stronger grasp on her life. Zhao juggles a complicated combination of being a tyrannical matriarch and a tender mother. In the end, her care for Dollar is well portrayed, but it is as complex as her character.

In its third act, Mountains May Depart breaks away from Shen and Zhao to focus on Dollar and his father Liangzhi’s life in Australia in 2015. The last forty minutes are almost universally deemed the most turbulent part of the film due to the Zhangke and the actor’s unfamiliarity with the English language. More bothersome though is the absence of Shen, who didn’t experience the redemption her character deserved. Shen returns in the epilogue, which pays homage to the most tender moments of the film. Zhao illuminates the epilogue with a graciousness and subtlety, and Shen comes off naturally more aged, capable and refined, despite Zhao staying the same. The last scene doesn’t say much, but ties the film together with nostalgia and hope, and leaves room for the viewers to contemplate the timeless iridescences of Zhao’s performance.

Mountains May Depart is now out in limited theatrical release from Kino Lorber in the US and Films We Like in Canada. For a slightly different take, click here to read Michael Nazarewycz’s review of the film.

I find myself drawn to films with ambitious timelines—those that span not weeks or months or even years, but decades—and over the past few years, there have been some terrific Asian films that have been so ambitious; Kongkiat Khomsiri’s The Gangster, taking place in the 1950s and 1960s; Jing Wong’s The Last Tycoon, spanning from the 1910s to the 1940s; and, to a lesser extent, Choi Dong-hoon’s Assassination, which ranges from the early 1910s to the late 1940s. This year, another decades-spanning entry arrives from Asia: Mountains May Depart, an ambitious Chinese drama from legendary filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke.

And Mountains May Depart isn’t just ambitious in terms of the timeline it travels and the arcs its characters take; it’s ambitious in how it’s presented by writer/director Jia. Rather than offer a traditional three-act, 131-minute film that spans 25+ years, Jia divides the film into three independent yet critically interconnected parts.

The first part opens in 1999 and covers about a 7-year period (other than the title card revealing the year, no other date information is available, so guessing needs to be done based on other clues). Tao (Zhao Tao), Zhang (Zhang Yi), and Liangzi (Liang Jin Dong) are the three players in the film’s love triangle that begins here, as China and the rest of the world are on the brink of a new millennium. Zhang’s businessman-on-the-verge-of-wealth and Liangzi’s miner-on-the-verge-of-unemployment represent the growing economic divide in the country, with Tao torn between the traditions of the old (Liangzi) and the excitement of the new (Zhang). Even the hostility the men have for one another seem to reflect a have vs. have-not mentality. Jia’s lingering, observational directorial style flourishes here.

Tao remains reluctant about which man she prefers, but coal mine worker Liangzi is no match for rich businessman Zhang, and eventually the man with the money gets the girl (and goes so far as to buy the coal mine and fire Liangzi). Tao and Zhang eventually marry and have a son, but all is not sunshine and roses. The second part opens in 2014. Tao and Zhang are divorced with the latter having won custody of their son Dollar.

The second part opens in 2014.  Tao and Zhang are divorced with the latter having won custody of their son, Dollar. Liangzi, now married and with a child of his own, suffers from cancer, the byproduct of a lifetime of breathing coal dust. When a family emergency arises, Zhang flies Dollar to be with his mother, but the young boy has no real maternal connection to her. It’s during this part that the film begins to unravel a little. The 1999 section was drenched in rich, meaningful drama. In the 2014 chapter, the tenor shifts to something more melodramatic with the presentation of Tao’s seemingly endless trouble with men. One former love has divorced her, another former love is dying, her son is a stranger to her, and then there is that family emergency. Tack on Zhang’s plan to westernize his and his son’s names and move to Australia to make even more money (a plan overheard by Tao while Dollar is Skyping with his stepmom) and it starts to become too much. Tao’s moments with Liangzi are divine, and her struggle to connect with her son is real, but the periphery begins to intrude.

The final section, which takes place in 2025, finds Dollar as an English-speaking college student with a fractured relationship with his father, almost no memory of his mother, and a blossoming romance with someone his mother’s age (Sylvia Chang). This section struggles throughout its duration, partly because of how Dollar’s relationship with his father strains credulity. It isn’t that the conflict between upstart sons and failed fathers isn’t possible, it’s that despite living together for Dollar’s entire life, the son has picked up no Chinese and the father knows no English (and nothing is suggested to indicate a refusal to speak the languages on either part). That Zhang has a gun fetish to the tune of handguns and ammunition just lying around the house feels inserted for shock value, and Dollar’s attraction to a mother-figure is terribly cliché. It’s the shortest segment of the three, but it’s the last one, and it doesn’t close the film well at all.

Jia also takes an artistic chance with this film. The 1999 segment is shot in an aspect ratio of 1.37:1, the 2014 segment widens to 1.85:1, and the 2025 piece opens even wider with 2.35:1.  It feels like it’s trying to be some kind of visual commentary on past/present/future, but aspect ratios alone simply can’t do that, especially when the period of time presented is only 26 modern years. The aesthetic of Nelson Lik-wai Yu’s cinematography from section to section is terrific—a muted past, a rich present, a shallow future—but the presentation itself does nothing for the film.

The core cast, however, is solid. Zhang plays the budding entrepreneur with the right amount of swagger, and Liang is excellent as the blue-collar hero with hope for romance. But this film belongs to Zhao Tao, and it’s a better film for having her in it. Her range and nuance are really something, whether it’s playing the love-torn ingenue, the regretful divorcee faced with the mortality of a past love, or the mother who is ultimately childless in everything but name. It’s impossible not to look at her and feel everything she’s feeling.

By establishing a love triangle and injecting conflict via the socio-economic divide between its two male protagonists, and then using that to represent the growing chasm between the old China settled in the east and the new China running towards the west, Jia Zhang-Ke opens his story with great strength. But the inflamed melodrama that dominates the tale as time marches towards the future only weakens the film, creating a desire to return to the better past.

Jia Zhangke’s follow-up to A Touch of Sin, his scathing criticism of the current state of China, is a much more intimate and sympathetic film, this time focusing on the cost of culture and heritage as China moves faster and faster towards capitalism. The film splits up into three acts, taking place respectively in 1999, 2014, and 2025. In the first act (shot in the Academy ratio), the young Tao (Zhao Tao) finds herself pursued by two men: coal miner Zhang Jinsheng (Zhang Yi) and wealthy gas station owner Liangzi (Liang Jin Dong). Eventually, Tao chooses Liangzi and has a son with him that Liangzi names Dollar. That sort of not-so-subtle messaging happens throughout Mountains May Depart, but Jia’s beautiful handling of the human dramas at the centre of his story make these moments easier to handle.

In 2014 (shot in standard widescreen), Tao and Liangzi have split up, and it’s in this heartbreaking second act that Zhao Tao showcases one of the best performances of the year as the devastated Tao learns that Dollar is moving to Australia with Liangzi. Then, in the final act (shot in Cinemascope) set in Australia, a now adult Dollar (Dong Zijian) bonds with one of his teachers (Sylvia Chang) while debating if he should go back to China to visit his estranged mother. Jia’s plain drama and handling of imagery, where symbols and objects resonate and reappear over the two-plus decade span of the film, is masterful, and his exploration of the loss of heritage and culture should resonate with everyone despite its ties to Jia’s own country. The often maligned final act, where Jia directs for the first time in English (prepare for wooden acting and bad dialogue), certainly has its faults, but Jia’s power at filtering such a complex issue through a moving personal story triumphs in the end.

The opening of Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin shows a conversation communicated entirely with violence. A migrant worker (Wang Baoqiang) travelling on his motorcycle is stopped by three young men in an attempt to rob him. The man responds to their brandished weapons by swiftly pulling out a gun and murdering all three. As the man drives off, he passes by two grisly scenes: a corpse from a truck accident, and an explosion that goes off in the distance.

This is how A Touch of Sin prepares viewers for what’s to come. A bloody, angry protest film (which has the Chinese government ordering media to never mention its existence), Jia presents four loosely connected stories that all show the same thing: one character, pushed to the brink by powers beyond their control, lashes out in a brutal act of violence. This makes each story play out at a slow boil. When a new central character emerges, it’s only a matter of time before the breaking point is reached and someone’s life (or multiple lives) is/are taken.

The first of these four stories follows Dahai (Jiang Wu), a worker for a mining company who’s livid at his bosses. The mines, which used to be owned by the town, were sold off to a private company. The company’s owners pocketed the profits it promised to share with the village, making Dahai try to file a complaint with the government. His attempts to get the company’s accountant to expose the truth fails as he discovers that many people have been bribed into silence. It doesn’t take long for word to get around (mostly from Dahai himself, whose boasting about going against his bosses lead to some unfortunate consequences), and soon he’s being offered money to stay quiet. Dahai responds to the offer with his rifle, in what is by far the bloodiest conclusion in the film.

This first act, the strongest of all four, encapsulates what Jia is angrily expressing throughout. China’s embrace of extreme capitalism has devalued human lives, reducing them to commodities at best and obstacles at worst. The effect of this has made violence and death more common, as the thirst for money and profit takes precedence over morals. Dahai’s story might be the most satisfying one because his acts, while horrifying and unjustifiable, are at least aimed towards people who are perpetuating this system. The following three stories, all just as horrifying and more tragic, show its characters releasing their rage on other cogs in the machine.

The man on the motorcycle from the beginning takes center stage for the second act, as he travels home to celebrate his mother’s birthday. This section, which has the least focus, takes shape closer to the end as we see just how much power his gun gives him. The third story revolves around a receptionist (Zhao Tao) at a sauna whose personal problems cause her to lose it on an aggressive customer. The final act, moving at a snail’s pace, shows a young man (Luo Lanshan) who causes a co-worker to get injured in an accident. When he’s told his salary will be taken from him until the co-worker recovers, he runs off to one menial job after another.

The last story may be the slowest, but it’s also the most pessimistic. The protagonist, the youngest of all the main characters, and his decisions show how the system he’s a part of have caused people to take little or no value in themselves. I have immense admiration for what Jia tries to do here. His message is on point, the violence is brutal and effective, and the film is well-crafted (given its structure and themes, it’s easy to see why the Cannes jury awarded it Best Screenplay this year). Unfortunately my admiration did not translate into enjoyment. Each story’s hammering home of the same point cause the film to lose steam quickly, and while the message is strong it isn’t substantive enough to carry the two hour runtime. The characters feel like blank slates rather than well-defined people, and the attempt to connect all four characters at the end is unnecessary. Regardless, A Touch of Sin is still worth watching if given the chance. Its execution may be lacking, but thankfully it doesn’t take away from the power of Jia’s intentions.

Trailer for A Touch of Sin