The central characters in The Shadowless Tower are orphaned, disconnected, separated from the roots that give them an emotional and spiritual mooring. The loss of his elderly mother prompts a divorced, middle-aged food critic to seek out the father from whom he’s been estranged since childhood, shaking him out of his torpor and causing him to re-examine his relationships. Chinese writer-director Zhang Lu’s minor-key drama will be too muted and elusive to break beyond festivals, but its melancholy spell stays with you.
The structure that gives the film its oblique title is the Yuan Dynasty White Pagoda, soaring high above Beijing’s Xicheng district but believed to cast a shadow only on the faraway Tibetan planes. Perhaps because he feels simultaneously stuck and adrift in a life going nowhere since his divorce two years earlier, former poet Gu Wentong (Xin Baiqing) regards this prominent architectural feature of the...
The structure that gives the film its oblique title is the Yuan Dynasty White Pagoda, soaring high above Beijing’s Xicheng district but believed to cast a shadow only on the faraway Tibetan planes. Perhaps because he feels simultaneously stuck and adrift in a life going nowhere since his divorce two years earlier, former poet Gu Wentong (Xin Baiqing) regards this prominent architectural feature of the...
- 2/18/2023
- by David Rooney
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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