Still Life (Sanxia haoren) (2006)

Back in the late 1980s I told my cousin John, who is fluent in Chinese and had travelled there, that I didn't get the movie Red Sorghum (1987). He explained some of it to me, but my opinion didn't change. Director Yimou Zhang, without my approval of his freshman effort, has risen to fame with Ju Dou (1990), Raise the Red Lantern (1991), Happy Times (2000), Hero (2005), and Curse of the Golden Flower (2006), some of which featured the lovely Chinese actress Li Gong, formerly known as Gong Li (like a number of Chinese actors she reversed her names to reflect our tradition of family names second). My favorite was the quiet relationship story Happy Times (without Gong). I was reminded of my reaction to Red Sorghum as I watched the first half hour of Still Life, winner of the LA Film Critics Award for best cinematography. It was pretty but S...L...O...W. But as the hot and sweaty first act ended, in which a man is looking for his wife near the remains of their old home, now submerged by the construction of a Yangtze River dam called the Three Gorges Project, it began to pick up in the hot and sweaty second act, in which a woman is looking for her husband in the same region (no, it's not the same couple). The third act takes us back to the man, and by that time, perhaps my maturity and perhaps better filmmaking had acclimated me to the pace. The cinematography was, indeed, spectacular. If anyone else sees this, please tell me wtf was the rocket ship?