Caught by the Tides

This is a quietly brilliant film, one that blends a personal story, about two young people trying to make their mark, with a more global one, about a country that, a little more than 20 years ago, began changing drastically by the minute.

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.

The real attraction is the huge canvas that the filmmaker uses to tell this story.

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.