CAUGHT BY THE TIDES: DUBLIN SCREENING, INTRODUCTON BY Jimmy Tianxiang Wang
The production of Caught by the Tides began in 2001, blending Jia Zhangke’s early documentary footage, newly completed fictional sections, and clips from his previous films, including Unknown Pleasures (2002), Still Life (2006), and Mountains May Depart (2015). Using a highly stylised approach, the film engages in a dialogue with the more than two decades over which it was made—a period that also saw rapid transformations in Chinese society. It centres on the elusive yet enduring relationship between Qiaoqiao (Zhao Tao) and Bin (Li Zhubin), piecing together segments of time and space across different cities in contemporary China.
In reflecting on my viewing experience and engaging with critical discussions, one of the most noted aspects is the dramatic stylistic shift in Jia Zhangke’s artistic approach to making this film. While his earlier works often revolve around individuals, building narratives that reflect social reality and voice concerns for the marginalised, this film marks a departure. By incorporating heterogeneous visual materials, he constructs an experimental cinematic text. To better understand this shift, I will explore two key aspects that shed light on why such a unique work emerged at this particular juncture in his auteurial filmography.
First, the film’s production context is crucial. While the past two decades of social and spatial transformations provide the film’s thematic backdrop, it was ultimately the pandemic that crystallised its form. According to Jia Zhangke, the lockdowns afforded him ample time to revisit years’ worth of accumulated footage (“Jia Zhangke on Caught by the Tides | NYFF62”). The intertwining sensations of familiarity and estrangement evoked by these materials inspired him to complete the project (Ibid.). After finishing the final section set in an imagined 2023, the film ultimately encapsulates what Jia describes as “a captivating cinematic moment where one of our feet remains in the past while the other steps toward the future” (Ibid.).
In addition to providing time for Jia to rework his footage, the pandemic also acted as an internal catalyst for personal expression. Beyond its biological threat to humanity, it unleashed political uncertainties, reshaped social interactions, and accelerated technological shifts—forces that continue to shape contemporary life. In this sense, it serves as both a generative and disruptive force, fracturing the linear course of history and demanding new artistic languages to comprehend and contextualise. Caught by the Tides emerges as Jia’s urgent response to this volatile era, engaging with concerns on both personal and societal levels. Standing at the rift in time, he simultaneously looks backwards and forward, contemplating history while embedding a reflection on his own filmmaking career.
Qiaoqiao, a recurring figure in Jia’s oeuvre, serves as the film’s central perspective, threading together disparate temporal and spatial fragments. She is generated from Jia’s earlier images yet endowed with a substantial sense of being. While representing the ordinary individuals swept along by the historical current, this character blurs the boundary between reality and fiction, embodying Jia’s attempt to register his creative process within the text itself. Adopting a self-reflexive stance, Jia reminds us that he is using filmmaking as an instrument, participating in and witnessing history.
Despite its stylistic departure, Caught by the Tides is not an anomaly in Jia’s body of work but rather an extension of his evolving cinematic language. As a leading figure of China’s sixth-generation filmmakers, Jia Zhangke rose to prominence in the late 1990s. Unlike the fifth generation, whose international recognition was built on national allegorical aesthetics, the sixth generation focused on urban spaces and contemporary life, adhering to realist principles. With a rebellious stance, these filmmakers used cinema as a medium of artistic and political expression, challenging mainstream narratives. Jia’s early works, such as Xiao Wu (1997), exemplify this realist tradition. However, as his career progressed, he expanded beyond these confines, developing a distinctive cinematic poetics. In Platform (2000), Unknown Pleasures (2002), and The World (2004), he fused realist mise-en-scène with a contemplative sensibility, incorporating subtle expressionist touches. Later, in Still Life (2006), he introduced surrealist elements, while recent films like A Touch of Sin (2013) and Ash is the Purest White (2018) experimented with genre conventions. These additions imbued his cinema with an alternative sense of spectacle—one that diverges from commercial cinema’s entertainment-driven spectacle and instead highlights the inherent absurdity and poetic nature of contemporary social spaces. His films construct a poetics of alienation, simultaneously offering social critique and reflective inquiry.
Caught by the Tides continues this trajectory, presenting a contemplative social tableau spanning two decades. It foregrounds the overlooked and the mundane, reintroducing them in ways that feel both distant and intimately familiar. With a keen sense of care, respect, and compassion, the film gazes at the struggles of those on society’s margins, reclaiming their dignity from the impersonal forces of developmentalism.
Finally, Caught by the Tides is not merely a film about China—it belongs to the world. Through its Chinese context, it opens a space for broader reflection, inviting audiences to contemplate the shared human history we have all been experiencing together.
(17 April 2025)
Work Cited: Jia, Zhangke, “Jia Zhangke on Caught by the Tides | NYFF62.” YouTube, uploaded by Film at Lincoln Center, 23 Oct. 2024 [www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGahnk19xXk&t=860s]
Jimmy Tianxiang Wang is a PhD Researcher at Huston School of Film and Digital Media, University of Galway. His research focuses on urban spaces in contemporary Chinese film.