an elephant sitting still:
a legacy of neglect

“It’s rumored there’s a circus in Manzhouli. In that circus, there’s an elephant that does nothing; it simply sits, in unfeeling oblivion.”

Filmed in Jingxi County of China’s Hebei Province, Hu Bo’s first and final feature explores neglect in contemporary Chinese society and the impacts of a town’s stagnancy on its people. Told over the course of four hours, An Elephant Sitting Still delves into the day of four characters after an accident causes their lives to collide. In a lyric of intimate tracking shots, Hu Bo’s characters unite in their desire for a higher purpose to life, made tangible in their fixation on the film’s titular sedentary circus elephant in Manzhouli, Inner Mongolia.

The film begins with Wei Bu (Peng Yuchang), a high-schooler whose blind loyalty to a friend drives him to accidentally and fatally injure the school bully, Yu Shuai. Aware of the notoriety of Yu Shuai’s gangster older brother, Yu Cheng (Zhang Yu), Wei Bu resolves to escape to Manzhouli in search of the rumored elephant. Before reluctantly seeking vengeance for a brother he never loved and restoring honor to a family he never respected, Yu Cheng wrangles with guilt after being caught mid-affairs with his friend’s partner and becoming idle witness to his friend’s subsequent leap off a balcony. Meanwhile, Wei Bu’s classmate, Huang Ling (Wang Yuwen), is forced to confront her self-worth after a leaked video exposes her affair with the school’s deputy dean. Simultaneously disgusted with her mother selling flesh for favours, Huang Ling feels the weight of self-inflicted demoralization. Finally, Wei Bu’s elderly neighbor, Wang Jin (Li Congxi), is faced with sudden abandonment when his son and daughter-in-law evict him from their lives and into a nursing home. Shortly after, Wang Jin takes his dog for a stroll, only to witness the brutal murder of his long-time companion at the teeth of another dog.

In Hu Bo’s city, stagnancy prevails. In the periphery of governance, China’s rurality is suspended in a time reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution, and the fume-laden atmosphere of Jingxi’s iron and steel production backgrounds Hu Bo’s emotional introspection into social neglect. Without prospect of development or change, a life of stagnancy operates at a lower decibel and, as Hu Bo proves, this plague does not discriminate.

An Elephant Sitting Still depicts a town skeletal and decrepit, where little happens, where little will be done, and where there is violence, quarrel, loss of innocence, and shared hopelessness. Wei Bu, Yu Cheng, Huang Ling, and Wang Jin are free people shackled to the impossibility of freedom, for freedom is only possible with prospect and opportunity. For Hu Bo’s tortured individuals, the apocryphal elephant serves as the mind’s escape. To them, the fact that the elephant is able to sit someplace that is not this place is a kinder reality in itself and the animal’s lifetime of containment becomes conveniently overlooked.

From a different perspective, the elephant sits not because it has nothing else to do, but sits for the sake of doing something. Much the same for the people of Hu Bo’s tale, there is little reason behind the acts each one commits other than to create moments out of boredom, rebellion from silence. The bully bullies, the guilty feigns innocence, dogs eat dogs, and arguments are mindfully stirred. Left alone with introspection, the people are at the mercy of time, which reveals itself a cruel interrogator. Hardened, Hu Bo’s characters are fearful and cautious, each remembering the hopes that were never realized too many times ago, and each destroyed by self-pity.

Wei Bu, Yu Cheng, Huang Ling, and Wang Jin are alive but not living, not until Hu Bo created An Elephant Sitting Still. When living becomes unbearable, we tell ourselves “the world is a wasteland” to justify the unfairness of reality and our consequent despair. Hu Bo was perhaps one such individual but An Elephant Sitting Still is, ultimately, nothing but optimistic. His sole legacy of a film is a bittersweet ode to the young and old of contemporary Chinese society, to those neglected and seemingly forgotten, to those who refuse to relinquish hope, and to those who embrace the darkness of light. In the film’s final moments, the camera trails Wei Bu, Huang Ling, and Wang Jin as they walk away from their lives and, backed by the electric riffs, synth murmurs, and bright chimes of “The Delinquent’s Cosmos,” their walks become bristled with purpose. Leaving himself behind as Yu Cheng, Hu Bo gave Wei Bu, Huang Ling, and Wang Jin everlasting release – a sliver of light where melancholy prevails and a possibility when freedom seemed impossible.



Featured in Cinema Skyline: Volume V.