A woman loves a man who leaves. She will go looking for him. In the footsteps of this traveling lover, the whole of China awakens. Wild Firesthe first images of which date back to 2001, spans time, a long-winded story, stretched over more than two decades.
Graphic alloy
Wild Fires is an aggregate film, a work of assemblage, a composite collage of images from its author’s previous films and images he has shot over the years. This hybridization gives its singularity to the film, neither an exact documentary nor a true fiction. Unconventional, both in its structure and in its tone – the dialogues are rare -, Wild Fires achieves the feat of composing a romance stretched over time and which, at the same time, brings into its sequences a Chinese society in perpetual transformation.
From coal mines to the vibrant streets of Datong in 2023, Jia Zhangke’s camera examines the metamorphosis of an immense country, between shifting traditions and imposing modernity. At the heart of this story, Chinese youth: their dreams, their disillusionments, their battles. It is an intimate portrait of the passage of time and the lives it shapes.
How time shapes people and life
Following in the footsteps of his wife and muse, Zhao Tao, Jia Zhangke recounts nearly a quarter of a century in the life of a lover and by extension that of an actress that he has continually filmed. The result is a poignant meditation on the passage of time and the upheavals of an unstable world. By following in his footsteps, Jia Zhangke observes the passing of time and the changing times.
The film still captures the struggle of the forgotten and the raw beauty of their world. Jia Zhangke gives voice to marginal existences, while deploying a very rich film language. What is striking in this work is the subtle balance between the story of a long-term romance, of disarming humility, and the controlled formal sophistication that the Chinese filmmaker uses to carry it out. This marriage of simplicity and rigor gives the film a singular depth, both accessible and of rare complexity.
Wild Fires by Jia Zhangke. In theaters from this Wednesday, January 8. Duration: 1 hour 51 minutes.
