Not long ago, I rewatched A Touch of Sin (2013) at the Ghent Film Festival – not my favorite film by Jia Zhangke, but essentially an excellent observation of the absurdities and the moral and physical violence brought about by the new socio-economic changes triggered by China opening its market to capitalism. Greed, exploitation, and a fair dose of the ridiculousness of the world we live in, lit up by kitschy colored LEDs and perfumed with the scent of plastic flowers. Right before the screening, they ran a trailer for Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023) – another road movie, so to speak – and since then, I’ve been haunted by a sense of similarity between Radu Jude and Jia Zhangke.

Premiering last year in competition at Cannes, Caught by the Tides only confirmed my impression. More hybrid and essayistic than ever – like Do Not Expect… and Jude’s recent work – this latest project from the Chinese auteur probes with extreme acuity into post-2000 visual culture. If the old TV commercials in Eight Postcards from Utopia (dir. Radu Jude, Christian Ferencz-Flatz) gave you a hit of nostalgia, you’ll also be touched by the Chinese dancers captured on Jia’s tapes, sweating to death on the dance floors of early-millennium nightclubs. Made of two parts consisting of archival footage spanning 23 years, from 2001 to 2023, shot by Jia here and there or for other projects (Unknown Pleasures, 2002, or Ash Is Purest White, 2018), and a third part filmed during the pandemic, Caught by the Tides is essentially an essay about time and image, disguised as a story about a woman searching for her partner who disappeared in her youth.

Mixing documentary and fiction, the director delicately threads a narrative from fleeting moments, incomplete pages, fragments and outtakes that never previously found their place – and now they do. It’s quite striking the ease with which Jia draws fresh meaning from old material. As are the early scenes, not just for their nostalgic effect but also for their “life beats fiction” quality – in one of my favorite moments, a man recounts how he saved a huge portrait of Mao Zedong from the trash, now sitting right next to him. 

Qiaoqiao’s journey (Zhao Tao, Jia’s longtime muse, across various stages of her life) along the Yangtze River in search of Bin (Li Zhubin), after he leaves the mining town of Datong to pursue new economic opportunities, fades into the backdrop of a broader ethnographic and anthropological project. From the local women’s folk songs opening the film, to footage of the massive and influential Three Gorges Dam construction, or street reactions to Beijing winning the 2008 Olympics bid, Jia crafts a dialogue between small and large histories (official and unofficial alike), observing both in detail – and, typical for the director, with a touch of caustic humor.

On the other hand, Jia’s progression from scrappy DV cameras of the 2000s (an essential tool for the Chinese documentary wave of the era – see also Wang Bing) to the ARRI cameras and clean digital images of 2023 also illustrates a history of recent visual language. Caught by the Tides is a sensitive portrait of the vast shifts in visual culture since the 2000s, sharply capturing the image and representation codes – both austere and naïve, popular and profane – that have defined life in the new millennium, from the observational austerity of heavy construction sites and empty apartment blocks to a grandpa with hundreds of thousands of followers dancing on the Chinese version of TikTok. Jia Zhangke here is a master architect of cinema in service of lived experience, recording in his film’s aesthetic span all the ways we’ve learned to understand and represent our recent past – and, ultimately, life.

Jia’s dive into his own archives could easily have veered into egocentrism or empty nostalgia, but what comes to the fore instead is not a self-elegy but these small yet meaningful spaces and characters pulled from time thanks to cinema’s romantic, salvaging function. Sure, the tone is somewhat more enamored with the past, since it seems more authentic than the ridiculous robots greeting you in pandemic-era supermarkets. With Zhao Tao – shining as ever through her typically expressive eyes and face, saying little and killing us with a smile – Caught by the Tides is steeped in familiar faces and favourite motifs (ah, beloved Datong!), but it’s not a self-portrait of the artist’s career, like Leos Carax’s C’est moi from last year. Caught by the Tides is instead a bittersweet remedy, offering the comfort that life goes on and changes, without losing sight of the gravity and complexity of the socio-economic transformations China has undergone in the past 20 years – nor the explicit and implicit sacrifices they entailed.

It’s hard to describe the kind of experiential cinema Jia Zhangke practices in his latest film  –  the key is to sit and watch. It’s such a great pleasure feeling the roughness of pixelation on the big screen and the frenetic visual noise pulling in all directions. Still, this isn’t some daunting experimental video installation. I have saved the best for last: Caught by the Tides is, above all, a musical – only partially surprising, since Jia Zhangke is a well-known music lover. From traditional songs and street noise to jingles, punk chants, and even “Ay, ay, ay I’m your little butterfly,” there’s very little dialogue in the film. People sing, dance, shout – sometimes in exuberant irreverence, sometimes amid the garish lights of the new developed world and its promised economic progress, sometimes in the torpor of disillusionment.

I can only recommend Caught by the Tides with urgency – probably the best film you can see in cinemas right now – attentive to the world and to history, and at the same time a splendid joyride. Rarely – to return to Jude – is the discourse on the great dislocations in image and visual thinking of our century so fun and fresh.

Caught by the Tides is in cinemas starting April 4.

Dora Leu

Graduated with a BA in film directing and a MA in film studies from UNATC; she's also studied history of art. Also collaborates with the Acoperisul de Sticla film magazine and is a former coordinator of FILM MENU. She's dedicated herself to '60-'70s Japanese cinema and Irish post-punk music bands. Still keeps a picture of Leslie Cheung in her wallet.