Only the River Flows (2023)
Directed by Wei Shujun
Not just the mystery. Everything flows in the great Dragon River: cultures, perspectives, lives. It is China in perpetual transformation, constantly ending and being reborn, destroying and remaking itself. A mosaic that never fully comes together. And it is this sense of incompleteness and malignant melancholy that Only the River Flows (a more ironic title than the Italian one), the third film by Wei Shujun, conveys. A misty, autumnal film that arrives in Italy in mid-July after its excellent reception at Cannes 2023 (in Un Certain Regard). A noir that successfully works on three narrative levels: detection, psyche, and environment. We are in rural China, in the mid-1990s.
The lifeless body of an elderly woman is found near the river. Leading the investigation is Chief of Criminal Police Ma Zhe, who until that moment had been focused on a dual goal: awaiting a promotion and becoming a father. The case does not seem particularly complicated, and his political superior pushes for a quick resolution with an arrest: however, something seems to unsettle Ma Zhe and complicate the investigation.
Immersed in a gloomy atmosphere marked by pouring rain and constant cigarette smoke, Only the River Flows declares its noir allegiance from the very first images, hypnotizing the viewer with its web of visual suggestions. The contribution of cinematographer Chengma Zhiyuan is fundamental, using 16mm film to create a “graininess” in the image: the effect is like watching a relic, an old film with the bluish haze of the late last century; but also of mist, of the opacity of reality. The mystery hinted at in the title lies more in the disintegration of human will than in the investigation itself, to the point where the film folds in on itself, becoming a psychological investigation of the detective: played by the charismatic Zhu Yilong (in an alluring guise reminiscent of Tony Leung), Ma Zhe begins to derail from the tracks of a capable and zealous servant of the state, beset by doubts and hallucinations that torment him.
Symbolizing a disoriented China facing a change that takes on the appearance of an unrecognizable, senseless, and monstrous reality, Ma Zhe must be brought back to obedience first by his wife, who claims the final say over her pregnancy (the husband wants her to abort after the unborn child is diagnosed with a risk of malformation), and then by his superior, who orders him to abandon conjectures and uncertainties and proceed with solving the case. Ma Zhe obeys because he has no other choice, at the risk of being cast out of history (his resignation is promptly rejected). There is no space for those who linger over the ruins of the old China, of factories, collectivization, and Mao: those who hesitate are destined to perish, while the excavators of the new era—then of Deng Xiaoping, now of Xi Jinping—are already in motion.
Gianluca Arnone
Cinematografo, July 9, 2024
