Watched in three sittings separated by a week each. After finally finishing, I'm sad to say I got less out of this behemoth than I did out of many feature-length films.
Now there are quite a number of cinema verité films I rather enjoy, even long ones like Frederick Wiseman's City Hall or Steve James' Hoop Dreams. But Wang Bing takes that style and philosophy to an extreme. Through an inordinate amount of handheld long takes, he lets the camera…