IMDb RATING
7.8/10
8K
YOUR RATING
Four people in a Chinese city live through a complicated day as their lives intersect.Four people in a Chinese city live through a complicated day as their lives intersect.Four people in a Chinese city live through a complicated day as their lives intersect.
- Awards
- 18 wins & 40 nominations
Uvin Wang
- Huang Ling
- (as Wang Yuwen)
Xiangrong Dong
- Dean
- (as Xiang Rong Dong)
Zhao-Yan Guo-Zhang
- Bu's father
- (as Guozhang ZhaoYan)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- GoofsWhen Huang Ling jumped from the window, the camera was reflected on the other window in front.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The Story of Film: A New Generation (2021)
Featured review
Four Hour Cry of Anguish
"An Elephant Sitting Still" is clearly a very personal film, a little too personal perhaps. It's a four-hour cry of anguish from a director who sadly took his own life shortly after the film was completed. No wonder then that the film has such a preoccupation with suicide.
Knowing the film's backstory makes it hard to be critical of it, but if I'm being honest I found my patience greatly tried by this one. It's misery porn at its most miserable, and it simply did not need to be so long. There's no break to the relentless drabness of it, and it's so depressing that it almost teeters into comical. After awhile, when faced with something as downbeat as this, you have no choice but to start finding it absurd that so much misery (including no fewer than three deaths) could possibly land on four interrelated people in the space of one day.
It seems heartless and pointless to criticize "An Elephant Sitting Still" for being undisciplined given the fate of its director, but that's what it is. It's an internal monologue from the perspective of someone who's clearly not well, and it teases us with the heartbreaking potential of its young filmmaker, because formally it's a very impressive movie, but it simply didn't have anything to say to me other than life is a pointless wallow in despair, which is not at all what I believe.
Grade: B
Knowing the film's backstory makes it hard to be critical of it, but if I'm being honest I found my patience greatly tried by this one. It's misery porn at its most miserable, and it simply did not need to be so long. There's no break to the relentless drabness of it, and it's so depressing that it almost teeters into comical. After awhile, when faced with something as downbeat as this, you have no choice but to start finding it absurd that so much misery (including no fewer than three deaths) could possibly land on four interrelated people in the space of one day.
It seems heartless and pointless to criticize "An Elephant Sitting Still" for being undisciplined given the fate of its director, but that's what it is. It's an internal monologue from the perspective of someone who's clearly not well, and it teases us with the heartbreaking potential of its young filmmaker, because formally it's a very impressive movie, but it simply didn't have anything to say to me other than life is a pointless wallow in despair, which is not at all what I believe.
Grade: B
helpful•104
- evanston_dad
- Mar 19, 2020
- How long is An Elephant Sitting Still?Powered by Alexa
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official sites
- Language
- Also known as
- Un elefante sentado y quieto
- Filming locations
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $32,556
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $10,854
- Mar 10, 2019
- Gross worldwide
- $39,599
- Runtime3 hours 50 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.78 : 1
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Top Gap
By what name was An Elephant Sitting Still (2018) officially released in India in English?
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