Final Rating 3.5/5
To be a truly dedicated detective you must not only question everything you are finding, but you must also be constantly questioning yourself. Only The River Flows is the latest film from Beijing filmmaker Shujun Wei that causes you to second guess every discovery made. Is everything you learn organic or was it placed specifically for you to discover?
Ma Zhe, played by Zhu Yilong, is the lead detective for his police department and has been given an abandoned movie theatre as his personal office to run investigations out of. His first case is figuring out who murdered an elderly woman known as Granny Four. Granny Four lives in an isolated village of about fifty homes where the community is insular. She raises ducks and is well liked by her neighbours. So it is quite shocking when her body is found by a young boy with a giant slash to her neck.
Ma Zhe is under pressure from his superior to quickly resolve the case as their precinct is on the hot seat. When investigating the crime scene, odd clues start to pop up. First, near the body of Granny Four is a purse that contains a cassette tape. Then when interviewing the locals, we learn that the victim had “adopted” a man who was known only as The Madman. Other than the fact that he periodically would stay with Granny Four then leave for months at a time, no one knew literally anything about him, including his name.
Upon investigation of the cassette, on the first track of side-B a hidden message was recorded by a woman directed to a man named Hong. It seems like a love letter in audio form, so now the police must figure out who the woman and Hong are with the only identifying information being a train running past the recorder and that a factory is mentioned on the tape. Things continue to get more mysterious when it is revealed that a tall woman with long wavy hair may have witnessed the murder making another person that needs to be found. Add this to the fact that more bodies start to pile up, and no one involved in the case is safe.
To make matters worse the suspects that seem completely obvious to the rest of the police department ring alarm bells for Zhe. He stalls when his boss demands him to close the case as the details gnaw at him. The Madman seems like the obvious perpetrator, but once found it turns out that he is non-verbal with some sort of a developmental disability who doesn’t seem to have any sort of aggression. Also who is this mysterious tall woman with long wavy hair that likely saw everything and could corroborate all the different suspects’ stories?
Shujun Wei’s film takes place in the early 1990’s, and to set the mood of the film he gives the movie a degraded film like quality. Scratches and imperfections (likely added digitally) permeate the movie, making the viewer cognizant they are being told a story. The colour palette is muted and dull, making good use of faded greens and browns especially since most of the film takes place in heavy rainstorms. As the story goes forward we go along with Zhe’s uncertainty as he questions and doubts everything. He imagines how he thinks the crimes occurred, but as it goes on it makes him seem like an unreliable narrator forcing details together.
Wei directs the film like it is a David Fincher crime thriller and Zhu Yilong’s performance is in the vein of Detective Mills or Robert Greysmith from Se7en and Zodiac. While fans of the neo-noir crime procedural will enjoy the detective chasing loose threads hoping to make the case finally make sense, there are plenty of moments that just don’t add up. When the chief of police claims they found their killer, Zhe keeps on looking for better answers, it becomes disappointing when we don’t learn much after the fact. The movie is advertised as taking place between the Tiananmen Square protests and China’s economic boom but nothing seems to place the film between these two altering moments of Chinese history. It might come down to the fact that Wei is trying to inject more subtly, but for an international audience more signposts are likely needed to convey what political undertones he is wanting to get across. Overall the film is super stylish, with great performances and that ultimately falls victim to other films of the same genre. That is being too clever for its own good.
Only The River Flows was seen during the 2023 Vancouver International Film Festival. Thank you to mk2 Films for the screener.
