Caught by the Tides: The Ebb and Flow of Time

Caught by the Tides is like nothing you’ve seen. On paper, there’s similarity, after all it is a yearning love story told over a long period of time. This kind of story, of the arc of a relationship positioned over a backdrop of social change, is hardly original. The execution, though, and the very form of this film is utterly unique. 

The huge caveat is that this film is really only for those already enamoured with the films of Jia Zhangke. The superlative Chinese director has spent almost three decades making peerless cinema about the soul of a nation and its people. He has that ability unique to the best filmmakers where he is able to craft films that function as entirely symbolic and entirely human (existing as both concurrently without sacrificing either). Films like Platform may track a grand, contemporary historical narrative — the nation itself the focus as much as anything — but it is also at every point a film about people. The relationship between places and people is central to his work, always managing to reveal one through the other and to do the inverse at the same time. 

Spread over 22 years, Caught by the Tides is conceptually similar. We, in typical Zhangke fashion, map out change by focusing on consistency. A common variable is presented over time and through that we see a world shift around a static point. What differentiates this, though, is that the footage we see is actually footage from the last 22 years. The film is composed of off-cuts, recreations and documentary inserts. All presented agnostically to create this unique collage. Some parts are evidently alternate takes or scenes from earlier films — some of it may be exact footage reused. In this way it becomes a chronicle of something else, a map of a filmmaker’s relationship to a place over time and how it has shifted through their career. It is tactile in this way, and staggeringly original. 

The narrative is new, and very cleverly woven. This becomes a broader commentary on the unchanging by showcasing the phenomenal Zhao Tao. She is the star of, or important actor in, the key works of the director during this period. Her continuity in those works is used to create a new central role for her and thus we chart out a filmmaking relationship as well. It’s such a rewarding viewing to the lover of the Zhangke and Tao collaborations. An engagement with these works over time becomes the subtext of this film. This is of course helped by the undeniable talent of both creatives. 

Zhangke’s career is made up of indelible and resonant images. His films follow suggested, visual-first narratives where ambiguous spectacle is our grounding. Dialogue is primarily demotic and incidental — with exception — the narrative is conveyed through precise compositions and usually through the presentation of a location. This style allows this collage film to work beautifully, it shifts through time united by an evocative aesthetic. Frames are fertile with meaning and beguile as pieces of visual art, not even needing traditional narrative to carry them. Zhangke finds his rhymes throughout the period, zooming in on precise and culturally important moments (the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese response to the Covid pandemic) and observationally presenting these each as one of many moments in an evolving landscape. 

Zhangke positions himself, and the film, as a social chronicler. The English language title summarises the aims very well, as it presents the individual among a collective tide of social movement. Here Tao is the rock. She has no lines at all in the film and gives an utterly astonishing performance. The approach grounds the idea of the observer, but also the concept of the static barometer of outside change. The wider narrative is about potential and disappointment, about how things fall apart as they are built up — but also about the need to take action against the tides that may beat you down. We sift through landscapes defined by decay and desolation, of dissatisfaction also. Moving ever forwards in a way that feels resonantly wasteful, the victims of change at the fore. 

Tao stays at the centre and is uniquely positioned. We get some of her thoughts through inter-titles and the overall language is very much that of the silent film. Though, sound is key. Like in perhaps all Zhangke’s films, music is central. By collating musical moments over time — and through the motif of societal decay among supposed progress — the film is most certainly a meta commentary on the repeated tropes of the Zhangke film. It is companion piece, coda and reflective visual essay on a body of work all alchemically formulated into an original piece. The music, though, is inspiring. Performance is a clear motif and an uplifting one. It is at points a social leveller; also, music and performance are expressive outlets and ways in which we build community among increasing isolation. The film is certainly about isolation — or about how isolation is forced onto us, taking in stigmatised roles as sub-stories to form a subtextual narrative. 

The ending is a moment of sublimity. Semi surreal in the way Zhangke often is, playful also. There are many playful bits spread throughout, astute observations imparted through vignettes that cement the director as one of our best social commentators — especially of the modern age. Our ending moment of release is one of real power, a point that loops back to the English language title and gives it new meaning. But that process is part of the beauty of the film. This is full of yearning, full of open ending searching. It’s all part of the style: an open ended, non linear portrait of possible meanings. It is perhaps less a film about meaning than the search for meaning in shifting times, about a collective yearning grounded in the poetic ambiguity of the film’s stunning compositions. Nobody is doing anything like this and if you are attuned to what Zhangke and Tao do, this is an experience without parallel.