Caught by the Tides

Caught by the Tides suggest that it’s being built on the ruins of a pastoral idyll. The past wasn’t that great, [Jis] implies, but if you’re going to replace it then make it something better – and that applies to Qiao Qiao and Guo Bin.

It would be reductive to call a movie as expansive and Caught by the Tides a downer; if anything, the final moments vibrate with curiosity about what lies beyond the frame, and where Jia and Zhao might go next.

Jia’s recycling is not haphazard or mistaken. He’s an artist squeezing all the juice from his lemon.

As emotionally effective as it is formally brilliant, it draws on a trove of material — both fiction and nonfiction — that Jia began shooting in 2001 while working on another movie.

In retracing his steps throughout “Caught By the Tides,” Jia delivers an expansive, ingenious summary of his project to date.

While it’s true actors can tell us much with their faces, and directors much with their vistas, a few words here and there to let us inside these characters would have been welcome.

The power of some moments needs no context.

[Jia Zhangke's] newest released film, Caught by the Tides, is the apotheosis of his life’s work and one of the most profound and emotional wrestlings with one’s own artistic catalogue ever released.

Caught by the Tides eludes the narcissistic congratulation found in self-referential cinema because it absorbs Jia’s early work to create something that has the shock of the new, as much as it builds on the past.

Tides constantly reflects through visually and narratively emphasizing the vulnerability of ordinary souls like Qiao Qiao. Such images are full of fascinating aching pain, as are the unseen and unspoken parts of the film’s primary relationship.