The constant movement of trains serves as a crucial backdrop within the film. The railways rather than being a path of freedom become bogged down with bureaucratic limitations, unreliable schedules and frequent scams. The promise that Manzhouli offers as an important port of entry does not translate to real change or transformation even if it remains largely inaccessible to the film’s desperate characters. The crackling uncertainty of economic instability results in broken families, homes and bodies. All the characters seem to live lives they would never have chosen if given any options. Just like a train’s path is pre-written and inescapable, straying from pre-destiny feels cataclysmic rather than liberating.
But the film is not completely hopeless. While circumstances are claustrophobic and stifling, Bo's movie seems to balance that with strange and surreal impulses of the heart. The characters are beaten down by life but they are still capable of love and connection. As "An Elephant Sitting Still" runs towards its epic confrontational climax, a sense of doom is measured against the growing influence of love.
Love becomes a bit of a double-edged sword, however, as it is often presented as a sacrifice above all. Love is one-sided, as is the case with a young student having an affair with her teacher. For a small time gangster, love means giving yourself over to people and systems that will almost inevitably betray you. Love means obligation, which often means tethering yourself to people who have long been broken by mistreatment and inequality and who no longer have the capacity to return it. Love does not overcome all within a broken social system: love leads to shame, betrayal and unhappiness.
Yet, love and beauty remain a constant source of minute, if not fleeting, pleasure. It is not a cure-all in the way it would be in a Disney princess fantasy, but it is enough to sustain existence in spite of its high risk and low reward ratio. The film is not down on love as much as it is realistic in its portrayal of it within a system of inequality and oppression. It is impossible to watch its final act and not feel the warming sensation that maybe tomorrow will be different, bringing change and offering beauty, love or hope.
By the movie’s last shot, the camera has stepped outside of the intimate closeness of its characters. They can finally breathe, allowing for a spiritually transcendent ending, one of the greatest in contemporary film history. Suddenly there is scope, perspective, and spiritual silence. The pace remains slack but time has regained meaning outside of suffering, at least for a few hours along an unfamiliar path.
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