Caught By The Tides (2025): Review
Stub • 238 Words • Film, 2025 • 12/12/2025
⚠️ This post contains a rougher cut of my thoughts on the topic and may be updated in the future. Please forgive any mistakes or lack of polish!
first act:
- an impressionistic musico-visual human-centered collage of china
- themes: work, culture, art, music, dance, community, life, commerce, technology
- it creates an interesting dynamic of not being totally sure what’s documentary versus what’s not
- there are some shots of scenery and objects but for the most part the center of attention is on people, usually crowds of them
end of first act through third act:
- the plot is slow to emerge it slows reveals itself and blossoms like a flower
- a lot of scrapped footage from ash is purest white
- the romance was nice in the third act but i did not really care for it in the beginning so wasn’t really sure what she was nostalgic for
overall:
- it isn’t disjointed per se but doesn’t feel continuous (bc it isn’t!) i don’t think he transcends the material but is able to create something engaging from scraps
- the editing and cinematography were beautiful
- a lot of double exposure edits
- great music across genres
- humanizes china greatly
- a tough film to rate bc i was probably not the intended audience as someone who had never seen any of his other work — i was able to engage with it only abstractly
- it felt like there were at least two films in here in the three acts and i felt like the first act was my fav, but that’s not to say that the other acts didn’t have redeeming qualities