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Jia Zhangke, Mountains May Depart, 2015 (still); image: courtesy Alamy
Film

Mountains May Depart

Sunday, Feb 24, 2019

5:30 p.m.

Phyllis Wattis Theater

$10 Members

$12 General

“With audacious leaps of time and intimate echoes spanning a quarter century of intertwined lives, the director Jia Zhangke endows this romantic melodrama with vast geopolitical import. In 2000, in the city of Fenyang (Jia’s hometown), Tao (Zhao Tao), a twenty-five-year-old shopkeeper, rejects Liangzi (Liang Jin Dong), a laborer whom she loves, to marry Jinsheng (Zhang Yi), a wealthy young businessman. (When the couple has a son, Jinsheng ominously names him Dollar.) In 2014, Liangzi is dying of cancer and can’t pay for treatment; his wife asks Tao (who has divorced Jinsheng) for a loan. At the same time, Jinsheng buys a house in Melbourne and plans to move there with Dollar. That’s where the last part of the film — set in 2025 — takes place. The teenage Dollar, an Anglicized and alienated college student, begins a surprising love affair that causes him to face his memories of China. Jia films these interlocking stories and their diverse tributaries with a bare and restrained simplicity that contains his many levels of rueful outrage. Incidental touches, ranging from music and food to industrial catastrophes and looming violence, evoke a nation out of joint and its lost generations to come. In Mandarin and English.” (Richard Brody, New Yorker)

Media Source: Kino Lorber


Film Details

Year: 2015

Running time: 126min

Format: DCP

Director: Jia Zhangke


Films and schedules may be subject to change.

Modern Cinema’s Founding Supporters are Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein. Generous support is provided by Nion McEvoy and the Susan Wildberg Morgenstein Fund.