I wandered into An Elephant Sitting Still at a point I was feeling particularly low, after an unproductive day spent alone trying here and there to find ways to forward my current situation. Some would call this a bad idea (walking into a depressing film while low), doomed to dig myself deeper into a pit as the wormhole of filmic depressions opens up in front of you. Yet, as I exited the screen into the foggy London night, I felt completely refreshed. My low mood and negative self-criticism had completely evaporated, ushering in a renewed warmth of positivity. I felt ready to move ahead with my wants, ready to care and pay attention to those around me again and, ultimately, rapt by my worldly possibilities.
But let’s stop here a moment. How exactly can light emanate from a film like this; a film centred on multiple suicides, violent outbursts, unfortunate circumstance and unfair treatment of generations lost to China’s endless economic progress? The youths are completely disillusioned, and without integrity, endlessly bullied and manipulated by their elders. The elders sit as dead-weight, either adding cost to already struggling families or being forced out into nursing homes to wither alone. And, almost worst of all, the adult generation fuelling economic progression are crumbling under the manifold pressures of work—being seen as expendable and, as such, walked on by their bosses. To top it off, all the characters, in their nihilistic misery and self-loathing, find absolutely no resolution to their woes but to run from them. They search for a fabled ‘Elephant Sitting Still’ which sits and ignores everything all day, every day. Although it is an icon which intrigues them all, potentially as one of freedom and defiance in the face of economic necessity to keep moving, they all express thoughts of it being entirely meaningless—unsure of why it is drawing them to it. After all this narrative misery, the credits begin to roll and we are met with the truly gut-wrenching words “in memory of Hu Bo, 1988-2017”—choosing to withhold a shred of information that the director took his own life soon after the film’s completion.
With all this, the question becomes even more potent. How did wading through this misery bring me to a place of positivity? And, more to the point, why is this the way the majority of critics reacted?
I can think of three ways to approach an answer, framing this turn to positivity as a personal reaction, a generic human experience or simply as textually specific.
Personal Reaction; resonance
Here the role of the film shifts from what is inherent in the text, to how it interacts with your current state as a viewer. This, many would argue, is a fundamental of cinema as a whole—or any art for that matter. Here, I believe joy can be achieved from viewing misery in three distinct, but quite interlinked, types.*
Firstly it can act as a mode of reassessment; we view the lives of others enduring (or not, as it were) times much darker than our own. And in that we see our troubles in a new light, as less disastrous than we had previously perceived. Allowing us to reassess, more often than not placing our woes into truer perspective.
Secondly, the images and tales that unfold can act as release. Providing an outlet for the negative emotions; drawing out our sadness or fears through tears and scares. In many ways, this confronts and releases the emotion directly, without dealing with it's real-world cause. I’m sure we can all recall moments, private or public, where we have loosened our inhibitions and permitted a film (or any medium) to provide us with this release. I certainly know I have a handful of films backed-up which I will approach for this exact phenomenon. And, through drawing these bottled-up emotions from our bodies, this is often followed by our previous state of reassessment.
Thirdly, and distinctly from the other two personal modes, is that of validation. This will most often occur when the depicted struggle is close to your own. Through seeing your concerns and troubles being played out somehow validates them as real, these concerns about struggling for success, fearing death or losing a loved one are met with an outstretched hand of a group of other humans exclaiming “we know this feeling, and have struggled with it too.” Lifting some of the weight in the knowledge that, although your situation has not changed, you are not alone in that struggle.
Yet answering our question through personal reaction alone meets almost a dead end, reaching almost nonsensical cyclic conclusion that “if it resonates with you, it will resonate with you”. But, to recall, the en-mass consensus of An Elephant Sitting Still was that it, through it’s misery, tended towards positivity. Although theoretically possible, I find it difficult to believe that the film resonated with each individual critic (unless, of course, the critic itself is a singular demographic). Why, then, did this film provoke such a response?
A Generic Human Experience
Perhaps the boost in mood achieved from watching these downing, deplorable or depressing films is simply a natural human response? Some neuroscientists and psychologists would argue just this, and have suitable research to support their case.
A 2016 study from Dunbar et al suggests that “emotionally arousing drama, in particular, triggers the same neurobiological mechanism (the endorphin system, reflected in increased pain thresholds) that underpins anthropoid primate and human social bonding” resulting in increased pain thresholds and a greater sense of group bonding, after exposure. The study delivered statistically significant increases in both fields and, even more interestingly, found that the phenomenon was unique to viewing fiction, as exposing participants to traumatic documentaries in fact reversed the effect, resulting in a decrease in their pain threshold. (1)
Similarly, it has been attested that feelings of empathy, often felt when viewing depressing situations, lead to the release of oxytocin—a neurochemical that, amongst other things, prompts feelings of care and responsibility towards others. (2) However, pairing this with both survey data suggesting that an extremely large proportion of people (85% of women, and 73% of men) report increased mood after crying (a prime indicator of sadness, especially in the cinema) and the words of researcher Knobloch-Westerwick exclaiming “people seem to use tragedies as a way to reflect on the important relationships in their own life”, brings about a striking return to our previous categories of personal reaction; through release and reassessment. (3, 4)
At a glance this suggests that many of these phenomena, still somewhat relying on the film’s personal resonance, are simply generic human responses. When we are emotionally moved by cinema, be it brought to tears or dragged through depression, these biological responses somehow raise our mood. Yet, looking deeper, the research still leaves some avenues unexplored. Most of the research utilises clips of high drama focusing on sadness as a response. Leaving to one side the catharsis of viewing violence, deplorable behaviours or even the irredeemable depression of An Elephant Sitting Still which seem almost incompatible with the theories described above. The observation that this turn to positivity, through intensely negative emotions, occurs only when viewing fiction, is hugely important. It articulates the fact that this catharsis isn’t achieved by merely watching acts of sadness or violence but by specifically watching them be simulated.
But, ultimately, a number of these responses still rely on individual connection to a piece—be it through empathy or emotional response. Meaning that although many of these responses seem to be hard wired they still rely on a one-to-one resonance between film and viewer.
Textual Specificity
Standing separate from all this subjectivity, textual specificity presents the most direct and objective way to answer. Here one would argue that the film itself is simply ingrained with a sense of positivity, hidden behind a depressing visage. In this vein, Hu Bo himself described the film not as an exercise in cinematic despair but a film about love; “Love as the march and sacrifice of silence.” (5) Thus it becomes clear that the ends of the film is one of positivity, in some shape or form, meaning my feelings may be somewhat unjustified come the film’s conclusion.
Applying this textual specificity to other examples; be it In the Mood for Love (1999), Taxi Driver (1976), Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) or Ichi the Killer (2001) there’s a lot to unpack. Taking Henry and Ichi, it is easy to contrast Henry’s grotesque portrayal of Chicago's irredeemable underbelly to Ichi’s playful gore-fest aesthetic which tends towards a positive catharsis through the expression of hidden vices. But, ultimately, would you say the same about these films? Or is it my specific relationship with them that draws me to a place of positivity? This perfectly cycles us back to our first approach of personal reaction.
…so why?
Ultimately, the answer to our question is contingent on where you place the film. Although Elephant was exclaimed by it’s director to be about “love”, it is hard to pinpoint what in the film actually points towards that positively. Even as the film comes to it’s conclusion and our protagonists find a shared goal in searching for this myth of an elephant, boarding coaches together to travel to Manzhouli (and it is definitely not coincidental that this border town is one of the most northerly land-borders shared with Russia) there is little hope that anything positive will come of their journey. Besides, of my screening of 10 people, perhaps 6 remained by the end of the film, a good number of which became completely disillusioned with the film, throwing their arms up at our protagonists naivety which results in much of the film’s pain. Thus the positive turn being woven into the text seems unlikely, and my reaction, in contrast with the rest of my audience, resounds as something quite personal. And, to recall, the arguments that such turns towards positivity are a generic human experience must still meet the prerequisite of being personally resonant; bringing on the teary release, reassessment or validation. Bringing us to an annoyingly cyclic answer to the question; my spike in positivity after viewing something so intensely negative was down to it resonating with me.
However, we are not leaving here empty handed! One of the key factors of this woeful refreshment is that it is through fiction. Documents of reality quickly become crushingly upsetting only lowering us further into those moods, as supported by the study above. There is definitely something in the knowledge that we are watching a fabricated misery; people pretending to live horrible lives, even if it is written from a place of knowledge and pain of such feelings. This is, of course, not to say that depressing documentaries cannot increase mood, in fact I recently viewed The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1987) which definitely refreshed my emotions despite it’s horrific subject of unjust murder and cannibalism on the Japanese front in the days after WWII concluded. However I would explain this renewed energy as coming from a different source, one which is arrived at through intellectual stimulation and exploration—not explicitly emotional means.
Within the wealth of information here, which begins to lead us in circles, it is clear that there is something in watching depressing cinema as a cure for the very emotions it depicts. Be it through personal validation, release, or reassessment, a generic human response or simply something textually specific, it is clear that this is one of the very few times in nature where misery, hatred, violence and damage can incite their opposite in those exposed. Bringing us the renewed warmth and optimism of being passionate, refreshed, positive and, most valuably, ready to love the world once more.
~Leo
An Elephant Sitting Still (2018)
4/5/3
12/13
References
(*) I came to these three discrete categories by surveying a number of my friends, drawing the most frequent modes into distinct types.
(1) Dunbar et al (2016) [https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.160288]
(2) Oxytocin; https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-moral-molecule/200902/why-we-cry-movies
(3) Surveys; https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/opinion/sunday/i-cry-therefore-i-am.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
(4) Knobloch-Westerwick Interview; https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0093650212437758
(5) Hu Bo quote, and a fantastic article on the film; https://www.guernicamag.com/how-to-suffer-well-depression-sitting-still/