Summary
This Silver Bear winning short captures a season’s worth of familial emotion in a compressed space.
Acting as a kind of follow-up to Summer is Gone (2016), with the same cast and characters several years on, Zhang Dalei’s short film DAY IS DONE (下午过去了一半) sees the filmmaker return to his home town to explore more themes of family and departure.
The basic plot sees a family return to visit their grandfather on a summer’s day. It’s a final visit of sorts, with the grandson Xiao Lei (Kong Weiyi) about to go to Russia for schooling. When the two are left alone, they watch films, drift off to sleep, leaf through photo albums and watch the hours tick by.
Over the course of 24 minutes, we watch the family eat, drink, cook, drive and rest.There is a sense of longing, or at least of something soon to be missing. It’s as if they are already all mourning the departure that hasn’t happened yet.
“This apricot tree is the same age as your wife.”
Using a floating observation style, one that might associate with Koreeda or Ozu, director Zhang perfectly captures the late summer lament. When we first meet the family, they are in a car discussing Russia and products of the former Soviet Union. As with those Japanese filmmakers, family gatherings also frequently take place at the dinner table or over drinks.
Cinematographer Lyu Songye’s camera focuses largely on small items and objects, from a photograph to food. When the family is seated around the dinner table, the camera stays in the kitchen, glimpsing the family from afar as though we have not really be invited in just yet. When the group finally leaves, the sensation of driving is replicated through long, slow pans across the sky. There’s a reason for that.
Mubi describes DAY IS DONE as a “commercial commissioned by FIRST film festival and LEXUS company.” Zhang has in turn described this as trying to “interpret a car’s driving texture in film language.” The various elements of driving are certainly present in the film – it’s the mode of arrival and departure – but it is by no means an overt technique.
Berlinale recognised this short with the Silver Bear Jury Prize, stating “Dalei’s rich cinematic language builds a sensitive family portrait that transcends the duration of the short form.” Those looking forward to seeing him transcend the form even further can look out for Stars Await Us, which is currently doing the festival rounds.
2020 | China | DIRECTORS: Zhang Dalei | WRITERS: Zhang Dalei | CAST: Kong Weiyi, Zhang Chen, Guo Yanyun, Zhao Hua, Hao Mengfu, Li Xuejian | DISTRIBUTOR: Rediance, Berlinale 2021 | RUNNING TIME: 24 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 1-5 March 2021 (GER)
