self-consciously and spontaneously, all
within a frame and employing a palette
that relates to a form beyond film, beyond
nonfiction, yet engaging in and with both.T
he terms ofDwelling in the
Fuchun Mountains bespeak a work
of hybrid nonfiction. In fact that’s
what I expected from the closing
night film of this year’s Critics’ Week at
Cannes based on its description. Shot over
two years in first-time filmmaker Gu Xiao-
gang’s hometown in the Fuyang district
of Hangzhou during a time of extreme
change—ambitious construction, mass
relocation—and starring members of the
director’s nuclear and extended family in
spaces familiar to them, the film is ori-
ented toward documentation. And yet the
aesthetics and form of Dwelling in the
Fuchun Mountainsbear no resemblance to
a documentary film. It’s unambiguously
scripted, plotted, choreographed, shot,
and edited like a fictional narrative. And a
great one at that. Only the first of what Gu
promises will be a trilogy of films explor-
ing the terrain, Dwelling in the Fuchun
Mountainshas a wide scope and ensemble
cast yet feels minutely observed, lived-
in, life-sized, and unhurried by anything
beyond its own frame—a close cousin to
the work of Edward Yang.
When I interviewed Gu at Cannes for
Film Comment, he volunteered that his
primary stimulus for making the film was
documenting the changes in the region.
Why not make a documentary, then?
He replied that his model wasn’t docu-
mentary but traditional Chinese scroll
painting, explicitly a work by Huang
Gongwang that shares the exact title of his
film, completed between 1348 and 1350.
A monumental, physically expansive work,
the painting can be read laterally, or nar-
ratively, with visual information being
processed as the eyes pass over it for as
long as it takes to scan its surface. Gu’s
assertion is that this painting was, and
remains, analogous to a nonfictional work,
containing a record of how the region
appeared in the 14th century, filtered
through Huang’s aesthetic sensibility.
Gu’s challenge was to eschew notions
of the contemporary documentary—
though even that sounds more invested
in such notions than Gu ever was—and
instead devise strategies for translating
principles of scroll painting into cinema.By taking as long to complete his shoot as
Huang took to complete the painting—
two full cycles of seasons—Gu ensured
that life as it elapsed, and space as it
transformed, would be captured by his
camera. Such change would be an essen-
tial byproduct of his methodology with-
out needing to be a constant overt sub-
ject. He accomplishes this granularly as
well, via long takes that both allow
enough time to pass for us to see tasks
completed, and traverse terrain like
Huang’s painting does, accumulating a
density of contiguous space that becomes
its own microcosm and micro-narrative.
These shots bear a purposefulness that
never allows them to become acts of self-
regarding virtuosity, even an elaborate one
that witnesses a character diving into a lake
and swimming for several minutes along
the shoreline, emerging to rejoin a conver-
sation he’d suspended, and then board a
ferry that we trail as it pulls away. During
shots like this, despite their obvious and
essential premeditation, it’s impossible to
deny that Gu’s strategy succeeds in thor-
oughly representing a time and place. That
he’s scripted a narrative that threads these
shots together doesn’t work against this
ambition. The story explores the various
challenges facing each member of the fam-
ily as they adjust to changes in Chinese
society, from parents trying to enforce tra-
ditional models on children emboldened
by independence and modernity, to sudden
realities of dislocation and economic insta-
bility. These are the issues facing the people
in his home region, and they’re being rep-
resented by people actually facing some
version of them in their own lives.
There’s little need to assert that Gu’s
film is a work of nonfiction, at least not
the way we tend to define it today. But
when we look back at life along the
Fuchun mountains during the second
decade of the 21st century, at how the
landscape and the people changed, at how
winter became spring became summer
became fall and then winter again, and
onward, we’ll have a peerless document in
the movie Dwelling in the Fuchun Moun-
tains—akin to the one recorded in wash
painting on paper, created in and repre-
senting the same place 670 years before.Eric Hynesis a journalist and critic, and
curator of film at Museum of the Moving
Image in New York.By taking as long to complete his shoot as Huang Gongwang took to complete
the painting of the same name—two full cycles of seasons—Gu ensured that life
as it elapsed, and space as it transformed, would be captured by his camera.July-August 2019| FILMCOMMENT| 15