Only the River Flows review – a spellbinding nightmare

Already on his third feature since his first in 2020, director Wei Shujun is one of the most compelling Chinese filmmakers to emerge in recent years, though his latest film, Only the River Flows, already presents a distinct departure from what preceded it – at least on the surface. Striding Into the Wind and Ripples of Life are both dramas concerned with film crews struggling to get movies finished. As such, a murder mystery thriller could seem like a calculated play for more mainstream recognition. Yet this complex, riveting detective tale is far from a predictable noir riff, and ends up being just as preoccupied with the frustration and puzzling distractions inherent to wrapping up any project in a timely fashion.

Superiors don’t necessarily want a perfectionist to address every nagging doubt or loose end. They just want a succinct answer that requires the least expenditure of resources, one that confirms the workforce’s ability to deliver something that a majority of the populace can find satisfying. Determining who has killed someone and why isn’t a creative process, but it is a form of storytelling.

Adapted from Yu Hua’s novella ‘Mistakes by the River’, the film is set in a rural Chinese town in the mid-1990s. When an old woman’s body is found by the river, respected detective (and expectant father) Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong) is assigned to lead the investigation, operating out of a recently closed cinema the chief of police wants to permanently acquire. The case seems straightforward: everyone suspects the victim’s adult ward, who has implied disabilities and is referred to as “the madman”.

An arrest of the easy scapegoat is made after the murder weapon is found, but various clues and missing links captivate Ma. When he thinks that perhaps the police have rushed to their conclusion, he’s explicitly instructed by his boss to hurry up with signing of the paperwork and move on, for the sake of PR. But in fighting back against too neat explanations, Ma’s inquiries and interrogations – which take him beyond the town’s borders – not only complicate his assignment but seem to trigger additional tragedies, by exposing tangentially-connected people’s vulnerabilities, some related to societal prejudices. Witnesses and interviewees start dropping dead, through both further murders and apparent suicide. And an ethical crisis concerning his unborn child’s health prospects only exacerbates Ma’s increasingly fragile mental state.

A rarity for modern Chinese cinema in being shot on film, Only the River Flows looks and feels like a ’90s artefact rather than just a finely detailed period piece, its specific muted visual palette recalling several Chinese-language milestones from the decade – elsewhere, select soundscapes used curiously recall Howard Shore’s score for David Cronenberg’s Crash. Korean director Bong Joon Ho’s later Memories of Murder is an obvious comparison point, for its similar mix of incomplete mysteries and probing of institutional mechanisms. But Wei maintains a highly individual, slippery and fascinating artistic sensibility all his own.

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