Sweeping over decades of modern Chinese history, the auteur Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides reveals profound changes in Chinese society by implanting a personal story within an epic sweep. Writer-director Jia has built Caught by the Tides from footage shot over the 21 years as he made other movies. In a tour de force, actress Tao Zhao delivers an exquisite portrait of resilience.
The plot is deceptively straight-forward, tracing the 21-year arc of the relationship between Qiaoqiao (Tao Zhao) and her shady boyfriend Bin (Zhubin Li). He moves away to find a better financial opportunity, promising to send for her when he’s settled. But he ghosts her, and she heads off to track him down. This simple story is embedded in a portrait of a changing China over the 21-years, with Jia’s clear-eyed observation of the changes and their impacts on regular people.
Neither Qiaoqiao or Bin can affect the course of China’s evolution (they are caught by the tides), but both seek to find their place it in.
This is a China that we rarely see, real Chinese (and I mean hundreds of non-professional actors) doing their jobs and entertaining themselves, in cities most of us Westerners haven’t heard of. In what amounts to one dreamy 111-minute montage, Jia presents scores of vignettes . We see retired miners tipping female singers, river travel on boats large and small, a small Christian worship service, mass jogging, an adage-spouting supermarket robot, and a most unlikely TikTok star. The stream of scenes never feels disjointed or boring because the continuity of human experience is so authentic and so novel.
The story begins in 2001 in Datong, a dreary coal mining city in Northern China, a gritty place where no building seems to have been repainted for decades. By 2006, when the story moves to Fenjie City, China is ALL IN on economic development, and corruption is rampart, as everybody seeks a slice of the action; the Chinese government relocated 1.1 million people, sacrificing their homes for the economic payoff of the Three Gorges dam. and Jia shows us the human impact. In 2022, the story moves to Zuhai City near Guadong and back to Datong; despite the COVID pandemic, the new widespread prosperity is jarring, and even Datong has become vibrant.
Jia is one of the world’s best filmmakers; I rated his Ash Is the Purest White as one of the best films of 2019. In Caught by the Tides, as in most of his films, he benefits from the collaboration with one of the world’s most compelling screen actresses, his wife Tao Zhao. Remarkably, Tao dominates Caught by the Tides without speaking any dialogue. Her character Qiaoqiao isn’t mute or even passive; she has plenty to say but she’s able to communicate, even forcefully, with her face. Qiaoqiao isn’t able to get everything to go her way, but the sound she makes in the final second of Caught by the Tides makes it clear that she’s living life on her terms. It’s an indelible performance.
Caught by the Tides is the best movie of 2025 so far and the best Chinese art film I’ve ever seen.
