Today on KIOS at the Movies, host Joshua LaBure sits down with Patrick White, Assistant General Manager of Marketing at Film Streams, to discuss the film Caught by the Tides.
Using archival footage spanning 22 years, filmmaker Jia Zhangke creates a piece that feels more like the way humans remember than a film driven by conventional coherence—and that’s exactly why I was so enamored with Caught by the Tides.
The film (VERY) loosely follows the experience of a woman named Qiao Qiao, played by Zhao Tao, and her relationship with a man named Bin, played by Li Zhubin. But the story between them is impressionistic and simple on the surface, with many of the details left to our imagination. This film is less concerned with these specific individuals and more focused on how they relate to the broader culture around them. Over the span of the film, we see China evolve from an emerging country into a global superpower, leaving behind many of the characters we meet early on as they age—making way for a new generation shaped by technology and unburdened by the memories of past struggles.
The images are stitched together less through dialogue and traditional narrative structure, and more through music—and occasionally through title cards that harken back to silent films. These choices, and the structure (or lack thereof), might come across as tedious to some viewers. But if you connect with the film and allow it to take you wherever it wants to go, without expectation, it becomes exhilarating not knowing where we’ll end up next… full review here
