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Still Life
Metascore
81 out of 100

Universal acclaim - based on 10 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 10
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 10
  3. Negative: 0 out of 10
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  1. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    100
    The first great film of the year. It's beautiful but so much more-full of subtle feeling, framed by a monstrous, eroding landscape.
  2. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    100
    Few of China's Sixth Generation filmmakers have turned to their country's explosive economic growth and its attendant upheavals with so sharp an eye and so heavy a heart as Jia Zhang-ke.
  3. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    100
    More than a million people have been displaced in central China in the cause of generating electrical power to meet the needs of the future; Jia's flowing river of a picture washes over a few of them as they adjust to life's currents in the present.
  4. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Kamal AL-Solaylee
    88
    Perhaps Jia is trying to prove the point that the future has already arrived. Or perhaps he is suggesting that the truth is stranger than science fiction. This is today's China: Anything is possible.
  5. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    80
    As usual, Jia's people tend toward the opaque--one of the movie's most enthusiastic conversations is conducted with ringtones. But his compositions have their own eloquence. Everything's despoiled and yet--as rendered in cinematographer Yu Lik-wai's rich, impossibly crisp HD images--everything is beautiful.
  6. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    80
    A modern master of postmodern discontent, Jia Zhang-ke is among the most strikingly gifted filmmakers working today whom you have probably never heard of.
  7. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    80
    This 2006 drama may seem to be worlds apart from the surreal theme-park setting of Jia's previous film, "The World," but there are similarities of theme, style, scale, and tone: social and romantic alienation in a monumental setting, a daring poetic mix of realism and lyrical fantasy, and an uncanny sense of where our planet is drifting.
  8. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    75
    There is no turning back; the biggest project in China since the Great Wall and the Grand Canal has claimed its human cost and now must prove its own worth. -
  9. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: David Denby
    70
    Despite all this desolation and depression, however, Still Life is an extremely beautiful movie.
  10. Variety
    Reviewed by: Derek Elley
    50
    Has almost zero plot but molto mood. It will appeal to the most faithful of the director's camp-followers and no one else.
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User Reviews

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User Score
7.6 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 9 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 2
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 2
  3. Negative: 0 out of 2
  1. ryancarroll88
    6
    Uncertainty is at the stem of Jia Zhangke's "Still Life" and it molds itself into many forms - uncertainty as to what China's economic boom holds for its future, displaced people uncertain whether they will ever see those they have lost again, and uncertainty over whether love that is broken can ever be mended. All of this takes place in the backdrop of Fengjie village, which was at the time being upheaved for the construction of Three Gorges Dam (now complete, and the largest electricity-generating plant in the world). Zhangke's use of a real setting provides for some powerful shots that have formed him into one of China's foremost artistic commentators, but this also diminishes the entertainment value (which, in my opinion, shouldn't have to be compromised in this type of filmmaking).… Full Review »
  2. RobertH.
    7
    The film has it's moments but when compared to the director's previous efforts the filmmaking here strikes me as far too lazy, relying too much on the backdrop and nonactors at the cost of lackadaisical narrative. if you don't edit your view of life enough to focus our attention where's the art?… Full Review »
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