Three Crime Films by Jia Zhangke: A Transnational Genealogy of Social and Personal Turmoil

This chapter describes a shift in Jia Zhangke’s cinematic language that reveals that his approach to filmmaking has evolved in unexpected ways following the release of his 2013 film A Touch of Sin. It explains how, in a highly stylized crime drama, Jia openly experiments with genre elements that borrow extensively from Hong Kong triad films while also paying homage to several classics within the wuxia tradition. The film, thus, marks a shift towards violent, formally ambitious crime stories continued with Jia’s two subsequent films, Mountains May Depart (2015) and Ash is Purest White (2018). The chapter, furthermore, offers an alternative reading of Jia’s films from a genre-oriented perspective, prioritizing his interest in the conventions of the crime genre over the meditative, naturalistic cinematic language that characterized his early work by tracing the genealogy of references and intertextual elements that inform Jia’s trilogy by identifying several sources of inspiration, including John Woo and King Hu, by bringing to light cinema as a site of the ongoing processes of conflict and reconciliation between a culturally independent Hong Kong and the consolidated nationalisms of China, and by exploring how Jia utilizes multi-episodic storytelling strategies to combine crime film conventions with social commentary.