Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides is the rare film where calling it “fragmented” is a profound compliment. Compiled of footage captured over four different 21st-century time periods (shooting took place in 2001, 2006, 2017, and 2022 specifically), Tides even deploys sequences from prior Zhangke features. This doesn't signal Ash is Purest White's auteur suddenly embracing the big-screen equivalent of a clip show. Instead, Zhangke and fellow writer Wan Jiahuan weave a yarn concerning gaps in time or human connection. Much like the segments comprising Kirsten Johnson's 2016 masterpiece Cameraperson, Caught by the Tides compellingly binds together disparate images never meant to sit alongside each other.
The intentionality behind the “fragmented” nature of this piece is evident right away. An arresting opening image depicts a man holding a rusty tool while standing outside near a small fire while a purple sky hovers over. Immediately after, Zhangke’s camera shifts to a camcorder capturing (in a low-angle shot) women joyfully singing songs together in cramped interior confines. This is the year 2000, where Caught by the Tides begins its expansive narrative. Zhangke and the film's trio of editors (Yang Chao, Xudong Lin, and Matthieu Laclau) then proceed to bounce around various parts of Datong.
This includes an early segment where the camera observes people hustling and bustling in a city during the daytime. This sequence’s lateral imagery strikingly evokes the gradually gliding camera capturing New York City denizens in Chantal Akerman’s News from Home. After these opening bits of business, Tides gradually introduces viewers to the film's lead characters. Qiao Qiao (Zhao Tao) and Bin (Li Zhubin) are lovers, though the former is clearly more enamored with him than the other way around. Their relationship crumbles once Bin accepts a job far outside Datong. He promises Qiao Qiao he’ll send for her. He never does.
Caught by the Tides fascinatingly indulges in cinematic ellipses when it comes to this central relationship. Specifically, viewers only witness the aftermath of key events in their lives. We don’t see Bin break that news of his new job to Qiao Qiao. However, the latter character’s tremendous anguish sitting next to a stern, subdued Bin makes it clear what’s transpiring. Watching Qiao Qiao repeatedly try leaving the bus (in an outsized display of her agony) while Bin constantly pushes her back to her seat (a visual reflection of him ignoring her needs) in an extended unblinking shot says so much more than any monologue could hope to.
In utilizing bits and pieces of unused footage or interview segments with real people, Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides is full of brief glimpses into the lives of actual people. We do not know every detail about folks like the manager of a ramshackle opera house or a boisterous group of loved ones singing karaoke together. Zhangke and his camcorder just got captured fleeting flashes of their respective existences. Ingeniously, the fictional narrative Zhangke and Jiahuan hinge Tides around emulates this footage. Viewers are also deprived extensive glimpses into core parts of Qiao Qiao and Bin’s life, no matter which time period the film explores.
Full disclosure: I’m not remotely knowledgeable about China’s 21st-century history. Because of this, I’ll abstain from authoritatively commenting on how Caught by the Tides portrays various aspects of the country’s modern events. What I can blabber on about, though, is how thoughtfully Qiao Qiao’s saga intersects with larger history. American cinema loves to look back on yesteryear in a tidy fashion. Musician biopics reveal that famous song titles from yesteryear emerged in nonchalant conversation. Something like Forrest Gump divulges that so much of history is because of one Southern oddball. Then there are insidious projects like Reagan that make cuddly superheroes out of dangerous world leaders.
Caught by the Tides, meanwhile, has a more passive relationship between Qiao Qiao and China’s modern history. The former character especially is, like most audience members, just a spectator to history rather than actively creating it. She witnesses ads promising new futuristic robots or people cheering in the streets that Bejjing will host the 2008 Summer Olympics, but she’s not the reason these developments have come to pass. As Qiao Qiao stands in the wreckage of a decimated village, for instance, Qiao Qiao does not suddenly experience a personal epiphany that “justifies” all this loss. Instead, she is depicted as tragically small in wide shots depicting so much wreckage. Glossy magazines, contorted Barbie dolls, and other signs of once-bustling life now lie with the tattered bricks. We are all at the mercy of both man-made and natural disasters. There's a reason the final noise in the Caught by the Tides end credits is the rustling winter wind. Those organic world elements supersede all.
Caught by the 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. Romantic dynamics that fizzle out are full of unresolved tension and questions that will never have answers. I love how Zhangke and Jiahuan’s intentionally incomplete portrait of Qiao Qiao and Bin captures that. Plus, there’s something so quietly uniquely devastating about just cutting immediately to the aftermath of an emotionally draining conversation between two former lovers.
Caught by the Tides wrings tremendous power in these quiet, unhurried moments. Powerful yearning just radiates off of the most conceptually simple shots like Qiao Qiao (in her late 2000s quest for Bin) sitting at an outdoor eatery in the rain. Similarly immense effectiveness also emerges from the feature’s wildly varying types of camerawork. Since Tides contains footage shot off-the-cuff at the dawn of the 21st century, the film oscillates between crunchy camcorder footage and (in sequences capturing the world circa. 2022) crisper, precise framing filtered through a wider aspect ratio. Resorting to actual images recorded two decades earlier gives the earliest Tides sequences a mumblecore quality immediately immersing one in the early 2000s mindset.
Versatile filmmaking styles abound in Caught by the Tides and provide a perfect vessel to display various motifs manifesting across disparate points in time. Chiefly, it’s touching how often music-based communal bonding manifests in Tides. That opening scene with the ladies singing together in that small, cramped space establishes a style of bonding materializing throughout the entire movie. A group of people create unforgettable memories in a karaoke room. Other women all sing hymns to a cross in one late 2000s scene. In 2022, street performers croon a tune, providing people with bursts of joy in their busy lives. The world changes. Houses crumble. Olympic ceremonies come and go. Our desire to connect with one another, and the joys of singing with other people, those are as eternally reliable as the tide coming in.
Sidenote: OMG, bit where Qiao Qiao pulls out her taser and silently threatens three intimidating guys with it was divine. All hail Zhao Tao.