[Review] An Elephant Sitting Still: Escaping (Reality)

"There's an elephant in the zoo, and he's just sitting there. Maybe people keep poking him with forks, or maybe he just likes to sit there. And everyone runs over, clinging to the fence to watch. Someone throws food at him, and he doesn't even bother."

Last Friday, I watched a film titled An Elephant Sitting Still. A thousand words might not be enough to summarize this four-hour movie, but I would encapsulate it with the phrase "escaping." The story features two young teenagers, a middle-aged man, and an old man. The entire narrative revolves around the daily lives of these four individuals, their destinies intertwined in a mysterious way. Each faces their own troubles but shares a common desire—to escape the hellhole of their own lives.

Wei Bu, the young boy, faces fairly common teenage problems: his parents' misunderstandings and endless, blind scolding; the helplessness of facing future unemployment and dropping out of school. At school, his attempt to stand up for a friend backfires, leading to him being bullied. In a subsequent altercation with a bully, he unintentionally causes serious injury or death, igniting a long-simmering urge to run away. He wants to escape the home, school, and life he despises. Is the boy "escaping" out of fear of confronting unknown responsibilities?

The young girl, Huang Ling, is at odds with her mother, believing she hasn't taken proper maternal responsibility to care for herself, even living by relying on a messy, ambiguous relationship with an old colleague for money. Meanwhile, the girl has a close relationship with her school's vice-principal. Both of them—in their own minds—live on the edge of morality. However, the reality is that both live moral lives: the mother, working hard to make a living, is periodically persuaded by the old colleague to sign a marriage contract and endures his indecent behavior; the girl has not had an immoral relationship with the vice-principal, their closeness likely being a natural reaction to her lack of parental love, creating a desire to be loved. Eventually, the girl has a showdown with her mother, unable to accept that they are cut from the same cloth, that her most hated mother has always been "like this"—living so "ugly" and so "selfish" in despising each other's actions. She resolutely decides to escape the people she loves and the people she hates.

It's worth noting that neither of them escapes out of hatred or fear, but rather out of a furious reaction to being personally abandoned by those they trusted. The boy, driven by loyalty, defied the bully even under threats of "being killed at any moment," along with his family. The girl enjoyed happily living with the vice-principal who doted on her. Ultimately, both were betrayed: the boy by his friend's selfish theft, and the girl by the vice-principal's lie about separating from his wife. Their sole support systems instantly collapsed, forcing them onto a path of escape to find a better life.

"Standing on the high-rise balcony, what would you do?" "I'd think, what else can I do?"

The middle-aged man, Yu Cheng, is full of contradictions in love. He simultaneously despises women's vanity and greed while pursuing them. He slept with his best friend's wife and was caught in the act—perhaps as divine punishment—then witnessed his friend furiously jump to his death. Yet, this man self-righteously blamed the suicide on his friend's wife and his love interest, showing no remorse. Is this because he was never loved and thus doesn't know how to love? The man has always resented his younger brother (the bully), who was favored by their parents, and so he hated him deeply. Yet, he is forced to promise his parents to find the perpetrator (Wei Bu) who accidentally injured his brother. In a short time, he experiences the death of two loved ones but shows no grief, nor does he feel it's his fault or that he bears any responsibility. Perhaps, as the leader of the community's bullies, he's accustomed to "solving" others' problems and helping others solve their problems, but he dares not face his own responsibilities. It's only when he finally finds the boy, and the boy tells him that when he faces problems, he asks, "What else can I do?", that he realizes the power to resolve matters has been in his own hands all along. The man once invited a love interest to Manzhouli to see the elephant, not for the elephant itself, but to escape his own mistakes (a point he shares with the boy). In the end, shot in the thigh, he cannot leave and must remain where he is, confronting and bearing his own wrongdoings (the police later arrive to investigate). Is this the "elephant's" ending?

The old man, Wang Jin, is the narrator of the elephant sitting still story. His ability to do so likely stems from his profound life experience. He lives with his dog on his balcony, but later, his daughter, to secure his granddaughter's future, forces him to move out of his own home. His dog—his sole companion—is killed by the neighbor's large dog, and he nearly ends up living out his days alone in a nursing home. The old man is no longer valued by society or his family; instead, he's seen as a burden. This demonstrates the old man's inability to leave his current situation. His old age seems persecuted by his social environment, a fate most people cannot escape. But it's not that the old man hasn't tried to escape; his deep belief that "it's the same wherever you go" suggests his past failed escapes, each teaching him a life lesson. Later, when the old man's attempt to escape at the train station fails, he passes this idea on to the boy and girl. Frankly, this life philosophy doesn't require wisdom—though it sounds more convincing coming from an experienced person—to be lived out. Other people in the community, including the vice-principal, the girl's mother, the boy's father, and his friends, all scorn the teenagers' desire to escape, believing their chances of success are almost zero, deeming it a futile endeavor.

"You can go anywhere, you can go, and when you get there, you'll find nothing is different. You stand here, you can see that place over there, and you think that place must be better than here. But you can't go. If you don't go, you can fix the problems here."

The experiences of the two teenagers highlight the film's theme of "escape." Is escape easy? Not only is it difficult, but it's also futile. The film's other major theme is the opposite of "escape"—"staying," or more precisely, "stagnation." In the characters' telling of "the elephant sitting still," the sitting elephant has a dual meaning: it can represent the powerlessness and helplessness of being forced to stay due to insufficient ability to leave, and it simultaneously embodies the foresight that even if one restarts in a new place, nothing will change. The two teenagers, urgently plotting their escape, are not yet "elephants"; at most, they are rapidly growing "baby elephants." They "stand here, can see that place over there, and think that place must be better than here." Is seeking a stable life wrong? Is it that the teenagers' stress resilience is too low, and their various life frustrations are insignificant? I don't believe so. Like the boy who wants to escape: his hidden savings under the mattress are stolen by his family; his plan to stay with his grandmother temporarily is thwarted when he finds she has quietly passed away; finally, at the train station, anxious to buy a train ticket, he buys a fake one. Despite multiple setbacks—no money, betrayed by friends, abandoning family, seeing the girl he likes secretly meeting the vice-principal—he still summons the courage to admit his mistake at the hospital and submit to the man's judgment. This shows he has not yet become an "elephant." However, repeated plunges into hopeless situations accelerate the boy's growth—an experience that leads to becoming an elephant. That said, the middle-aged man and the old man are actually the ultimate answers the children seek. The former has thought about and tried to escape; he is the "elephant" who ultimately found things did not go as planned. They have deeper and richer life experiences than the teenagers, and their relationships with people and events are numerous and complex. They have likely experienced countless disappointments and failed escapes (though not explicitly shown in the film), coming to understand and reluctantly accept the tragic reality that "it's the same wherever you go." They are indeed true "elephants."

The people in the story seem to gradually grow into "elephants," embarking on the "elephant's" long journey step by step with experience. Initially, they harbor hope for a new place, and along the way, they hear the elephant's roar in the darkness, mistaking it for a call of rebirth. The irony is that when you finally reach Manzhouli and see the elephant sitting still, your transformation into an elephant is not far off. So why does the old man ultimately embark on this journey (escape) with the teenagers? Besides a desire for companionship (the underlying reason, of course, being that he has no other recourse, unable to return home and "hog" his daughter's family, nor willing to live in a nursing home), it is more likely—whether self-deception or stubbornness—that he still holds a sliver of hope for change. He doesn't know if this change will be good or bad, but it is one of the few remaining hopes in his life. Perhaps the old man sees his younger self in the teenagers, and they rekindle the "desire to see the elephant" that he once briefly possessed. Perhaps Manzhouli itself cannot answer the doubts of lost souls; only the journey to Manzhouli can.

Finally, I hope director Hu Bo can continue to create freely and unrestrictedly in another desolate place.