Even though director Wei Shujun’s Chinese neo-noir crime thriller Only the River Flows is adapted from writer Yu Hua’s novella, Mistakes by the River, genre fans can’t help but notice the myriad similarities the movie shares with Bong Joon-ho’s masterpiece, Memories of Murder—be it through its narrative and visual composition, moody and atmospheric small town aesthetics, or its exploration of themes of ethics, social consciousness, and scope of morality through investigation of serial killings. But aside from all this, what’s going to excite genre fans—the subtle use of dark humor to poke at the decrepit administrative system and the degenerated state of conscience among people in power—are some of the major signifiers that the movie shares with its South Korean spiritual predecessor. Gorgeously shot in 16-mm film to capture the Chinese rural town in the mid-90s it uses as its setting,...
- 10/14/2024
- by Siddhartha Das
- Film Fugitives
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