An Elephant Sitting Still (LTCG Pt.4)

"He told me the other day. There is an elephant in Manzhouli. It sits there all day long. Perhaps some people keep stabbing it with forks. Or maybe it just enjoys sitting there. I don't know."

- Yu Cheng (played by actor Zhang Yu)

Title: An Elephant Sitting Still (2018)

Director: Hu Bo

Cinematographer: Fan Chao

Colour Scheme: Analogous / Complementary

(Left to right: Wang Yuwen, Liu Congxi, Zhang Yu, Peng Yuchang)

While one person in the film might be in focus, all else is a fugue of undefined colours and shapes, a visual that exhausts the audience and parallels the internal frustration of existentialism. Contrasted to the other films abundance of colour, this film will act as a noticeable turning point and finale to the telling of the Chinese story through the lens of colour.

A history of vibrance and exuberance through colour is only met with the grim realisation that modern China may be so starved of organic spirit that it is literally drained from the screen. A harsh realisation of consumer media and the seemingly lost identity of the Chinese people.