Zhang Jinsheng (Zhang Yi) shows his love for Shen Tao (Zhao Tao) in materialistic ways in Jia Zhangke’s MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART
MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART (SHAN HE GU REN) (Jia Zhangke, 2015)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Friday, January 1, 7:30
Series runs through January 15
Tickets: $12; may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
Master Chinese writer-director Jia Zhangke returned to the New York Film Festival this year with Mountains May Depart, a melancholic look at love and relationships in which one decision can change the rest of your life, as well as an allegory about China itself and its path in the world. Jia’s wife and muse, Zhao Tao, stars as Shen Tao, a flighty, flakey young woman flirting with coal miner Liangzi (Liang Jin Dong) and burgeoning capitalist Zhang Jinsheng (Zhang Yi) in 1999 China, the country on the cusp of an economic crisis. It’s easy to see the young woman’s romantic decision as a microcosm of China’s economic decisions, as the working class battles the wealthy elite, and the effects of both are profound. The setup is reminiscent of the love triangle at the center of François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim, but Jia takes it much further, continuing the story in 2014, and then into 2025, a bleak future where individual happiness is painfully elusive. Jia (Still Life, The World, 24 City) and his longtime cinematographer, Yu Lik-wai, shoot the three time periods in different screen ratios, exemplifying how much things evolve as Chinese capitalism and globalism take over, affecting — and disaffecting — the next generation. But the past is always snapping at the characters’ heels; much of the film takes place in the Yellow River basin, where ancient structures recall China’s history, and in Jia’s vision of the future, vinyl LPs are back in fashion (although handheld devices are much cooler). Music plays a key role in the film, primarily Sally Yeh’s Cantonese song “Take Care” and the Pet Shop Boys’ cover of the Village People’s “Go West,” the latter a title that gets to the heart of the film.
Mia (Sylvia Chang) takes stock of her complicated life in MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART
Zhao is marvelous as the bittersweet Shen, from singing at the colorful Fenyang Spring Festival Gala as the new millennium approaches to trying to restore her relationship with her son (Dong Zijian), who her husband insisted be named Dollar. Her eyes are filled with emotion as she proceeds on a course that was never what she dreamed. In the third section, Sylvia Chang shines as Mia, a sensitive, divorced teacher from Hong Kong who grows close to Dollar in a future world in which English has eclipsed Chinese, so fathers and sons literally do not speak the same language. Navigating the four physical sufferings of Buddhist thought — birth, old age, sickness, and death, Jia avoids showing many key moments in the lives of the characters, often leaving it up to the audience to uncover what has happened over the years and decades, which has a certain grace, although the ambiguous ending is more than a bit frustrating, even if it makes sense as a parable for China as a whole. But it’s all encapsulated in the briefest of kisses in a helicopter that will both brighten and break your heart. And keep an eye out for the guy with the Guangdong Broadsword. Mountains May Depart is screening January 1 at 7:30 in MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders,” which consists of films the institution believes will stand the test of time; the festival continues through January 15 with such other 2015 works as George Miller’s Max Mad: Fury Road, David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows, Michael Moore’s Where to Invade Next, and John Crowley’s Brooklyn.
Following its prestigious midnight film screening at Cannes this past May, Hong Won-chan’s debut feature, Office, was the opening-night selection of the 2015 New York Korean Film Festival in November at the Museum of the Moving Image. If you missed it then, you have another chance to see it in Queens on January 3, as it is one of eight films that comprise the museum’s “Curators’ Choice” series, its annual survey of some of the best films of the year. In the contemporary thriller, written by Choi Yun-jin (Steel Cold Winter), Seoul salaryman Kim Byung-Guk (Bae Seong-woo) calmly comes home from work one night and butchers his family with a hammer. The next morning, Detective Jong-hoon (Park Sung-woong) arrives at the office with plenty of questions, but no one has much to say about the killer, who was part of sales team #2 — although they are clearly hiding something. Only frazzled, insecure, wide-eyed intern Lee Mirae (Ko Ah-sung), who had a friendly relationship with Kim, wants to tell the truth, but she keeps her mouth shut, harassed by her boss (Ryu Hyun-kyung) and director Kim (Kim Eui-sung). When it is discovered that the murderer returned to the office after committing his vicious crime and may still be in the building, the tension ramps up, as does the body count. 
Throughout the year, MoMA shows “Modern Matinees” at 1:30 on many weekday afternoons, treating visitors with an afternoon to spare to some amazing “deep cuts” from its vast cinema library. “Modern Matinees: The Film Library Grows” is its current series, celebrating the eightieth anniversary of the Department of Film and honoring the legacy of founding curator Iris Barry. It concludes December 31 with William A. Wellman’s classic gangster picture, The Public Enemy. But as a treat for those who can’t get away for a weekday afternoon screening, MoMA is now bringing back some of its favorites in “Modern ‘Matinees’: Fashionably Late,” presenting the films at more convenient times, including on holiday and weekend afternoons and weekday evenings. “Fashionably Late” begins January 1 at 4:00 with Josef von Sternberg’s 1927 silent black-and-white Underworld, which is generally considered the first modern gangster picture and was a major influence on such films as The Public Enemy and Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar, the latter scheduled for January 1 at 7:00. Sternberg’s fourth film, Underworld is set in “a great city in the dead of night. . . . streets lonely, moon-flooded. . . . buildings empty as the cliff-dwellings of a forgotten age.” The opening shot is of a superimposed clock, emphasizing that it is two o’clock in the morning, a time when most are tucked safely in their bed at home. But not Bull Weed (George Bancroft), who has just pulled off a bank heist, only to be spotted by Rolls Royce (Clive Brook), a down-on-his-luck drunken bum. At Bull’s hangout, the Dreamland Café, his girl, Feathers (Evelyn Brent), enters, and a single strand from her extravagant getup floats down, the camera following it until it is grabbed by Rolls Royce, who is sweeping the floor. Bull’s main rival, Buck Mulligan (Fred Kohler), tries to get the attention of Feathers, upsetting his own moll, Meg (Helen Lynch). Walking out of the nightclub, Bull is greeted by an electronic billboard proclaiming, “The City Is Yours.” (Howard Hawks goes one better in his seminal 1932 film, Scarface, in which the title character, Antonio “Tony” Camonte, played by Paul Muni, is encouraged by an electronic sign that tells him, “The World Is Yours.”) Laughing, Bull playfully asks Feathers, “What’ll you have?” She scoffs at him, then Rolls Royce, a former lawyer, says, “Attila, the Hun, at the gates of Rome.” To which Bull replies, “Who’s Attila? The leader of some wop gang?” The stage has been set for the rest of the film, built around jealousy and envy as both Buck and Rolls Royce, who Bull decides to rehabilitate, fall hard for Feathers, but Bull is not about to just sit back and take it. 
Forget about It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on Thirty-Fourth Street, and endless versions of A Christmas Carol; our new favorite holiday movie is Douglas Sirk’s sensationally strange and beautiful All That Heaven Allows, and you can see it, along with the similarly sensationally strange and beautiful Magnificent Obsession, December 24 & 25 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s two-week, twenty-eight-movie retrospective “Imitations of Life: The Films of Douglas Sirk.” Released in 1954, Magnificent Obsession is a remake of John Stahl’s 1935 film, which starred Irene Dunne and Robert Taylor and was based on Lloyd C. Douglas’s book. In his breakthrough performance in the 1954 version, Rock Hudson is Bob Merrick, an errant playboy who gets seriously injured while recklessly racing his fancy speedboat. He is saved when the town’s only resuscitator is rushed over to him; however, it turns out that at the same time, a well-respected and beloved local doctor, Wayne Phillips, suffers a heart attack and dies because the resuscitator was being used for Merrick instead. Eventually riddled with guilt, Merrick attempts to befriend the doctor’s widow, Helen (an Oscar-nominated Jane Wyman), but only ends up making things worse when he helps cause an accident that blinds Helen. He then falls in love with her, which leads to a whole slew of other problems. The next year, Hudson and Wyman fell in love again in Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows. This time around, Hudson is Ron Kirby, a soft-hearted, hunky gardener who prefers a simple, outdoorsy life yet is drawn to Cary Scott (Wyman), an older widow who is firmly entrenched in her community’s country-club lifestyle. They begin a passionate affair but when they decide to wed, Cary’s children and the snooty members of the town’s social register are thoroughly appalled and do everything in their power to drive them apart because of class, wealth, and age differences.
