In the Flesh: Ash Is Purest White (Patreon)

It’s seldom I get the chance to sit down and watch something every frame of which is absolutely visually riveting. It’s enough to make me glad for Ash Is Purest White’s glacial pace and tone, content to sit and watch as director Jia Zhangke and cinematographer Eric Gautier glide through the ghostly emptiness of Datong prefecture circa 2001, derelict housing blocks and darkened warehouses worn down by time, storefronts blasted and weathered by wind and rain. In karaoke bars and dance halls burn islands of light and motion, but even here entropy gnaws at every haloed chandelier and blazing arcade cabinet. Qiao (Zhao Tao) and her gangster boyfriend Bin (Liao Fan) dance and smoke and slug their way through this world of urban decay and backroom mid-level crime until, with violent suddenness, they don’t.

The film’s story is gorgeous, a slow burning away of life’s accumulated vanities and dreams until, like the titular volcanic ash, nothing remains but what is undeniable and purified, but it’s Zhangke’s visual sensibilities that truly captivate. Interiors are bathed in sickly green, the wallpaper practically peeling in real time. Collapsing buildings span a vast range of grays and browns, beiges and whites, while the lush overgrowth of vacant lots practically screams with living verdure. In one scene Qiao takes an extended journey on a river boat (the film’s repeated use of public transit is engrossing and deserves an essay of its own) during which we see her stand at the vessel’s port rail beneath the overhanging deck, drab cabin doors stretching away toward the prow until perspective forces an attenuating slant. A long, slow sojourn from nowhere into nothing.

Another shot positions Qiao behind the glass wall of a corporate lobby, waiting anxiously for an appointment as behind her, rendered murky by distance and glass, colorful fish wheel and dart in a large tank. Zhangke’s film has a refreshing, intelligent depth of field absent from even some of the most attractive modern films. Even more refreshing is his resolute casting of normal-looking people, each face immediately distinct and full of character, untouched by the machined and factory-packaged type of beauty which renders so many films as sterile as catalog photoshoots. Instead the faces and bodies of Ash Is Purest White are as worn as Datong’s crumbling architecture, all scarred hands and weathered, wind-burned faces etched by time and love and loss.