The survival of a director through his work - Impact Campus

During the first three waves of the pandemic, I saw my share of films.Among these, an Elephant Sitting Still A Chinese film released quite recently, in 2018.He has completely changed my life, and I weigh my words.I saw it in January 2021 and I still think about it regularly.

By Marc-Antoine Auger, collaborator journalist

An Elephant Sitting Still is not the happiest film in the universe, I want to say it from the outset.We follow the story in parallel with 4 different people who do not all know each other.The first is a young person in high school who undergoes boundary treatments on the part of his father at home and the bullying of the Bully at school who accuses him of having stolen his cell phone.The second is a friend of the first who devotes herself to living a relationship with the director of the school.The third is a small bandit, and the fourth is a gentleman in sixties who is constantly pushing by his children to sell his home so that they can pocket a little money.These 4 people are, at a certain point in the film, animated by the same desire: that of going to see an elephant in a zoo not far from where they live which we say that he spends all his days sitting on the spot withoutto move.This film is a metaphor, we should not watch it expecting a spectacular punch at the end of the film, we should rather watch it saying that the path traveled is more important than the destination.

Le réalisateurLorsqu’on connait un tant soit peu la vie du réalisateur Hu Bo et le contexte dans lequel il a créé son œuvre, le film gagne encore en significations.Hu Bo tragically committed suicide after finishing the production of the film at the age of 29.He had serious problems of depression, gambling, alcoholism, this film was a little for him a lifeline to get out of this perpetual slump, but it was unfortunately not enough.