WATCH PARTY: An Elephant Sitting Still (2019) directed by Hu Bo @Pretlow Library

Buckle up for a grim-but-beautiful, nearly 4-hour Chinese movie that was its director's first, and unfortunately, last. We'll be starting around 11:45 am and we'll take a 15 minutes intermission in the middle.

RUNTIME: 230 minutes

SYNOPSIS: In the northern Chinese city of Manzhouli, they say there is an elephant that simply sits and ignores the world. Manzhouli becomes an obsession for the protagonists of this film, a longed-for escape from the world in which they find themselves. Among them is schoolboy Bu, on the run after pushing a bully down the stairs and accidentally injuring him. In virtuoso visual compositions, the film tells the story of one single suspenseful day from dawn to dusk, when the train to Manzhouli is set to depart.

BLURBS:
"One of the great achievements of recent cinema." - Richard Brody, The New Yorker

"One thing that you shouldn't expect from An Elephant Sitting Still is some artless, ragged cry of rage: despite its bleakness and its visual and tonal austerity, this is a film of extraordinary beauty, invention, and grace." - Jonathan Romney, Film Comment

"An extraordinary, overpoweringly bleak movie. Here is where I’m supposed to alert you that this movie runs nearly four hours. Would it convince you to hear that it doesn’t have a single boring moment, and that it plumbs emotional depths that can only be achieved with the investment of time?" - Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times