Zhang Ke Jia's award-winning Still Life lives up to its title. It's a slow-but-mesmerizing look at people literally stuck in time. Still Life is a masterfully crafted film that will hang in your memory for days, but it's for devoted film-goers only. Movie seekers looking for a quick pace or a lesson in detailed storytelling will be frustrated. To be honest, some will even be put to sleep by Still Life. But movies can be windows into another part of the world. When you look through the frame of Still Life you see a people not that different from ones you know caught in a very unusual place and time. Watching Still Life can be frustratingly slow but it's the effect that it has in the hours and days after the lights come up that makes it such a remarkable experience. Zhang Ke Jia's characters are like ghosts that will be hard for anyone to shake. For lovers of foreign language films, Still Life is a must-see.

The director of the highly acclaimed The World and Unknown Pleasures turns his camera to the people of Fengjie, a city in China that's in the process of being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam Project. The real Project required the relocation of over 1.4 million people (a number that continues to rise as more areas are flooded and the scope of the project expands). In Chinese, the title of Jia's film translates as "Good People of the Three Gorges." He tells two stories, one about a man trying to reconstruct his past and another about a woman trying to tear down her future. Neither has anything but the present, which is being destroyed by the minute. Sanming Han, a coal-miner from Shanxi returns to Fengjie to find the daughter he left behind 16 years earlier. Hong Shen, a nurse, comes to town to find her missing husband, who has been having an affair. Both characters are trapped in time, unable to move forward without demolishing either their missing pasts or futures.

Still Life is undeniably slow but it's often mesmerizing, especially when Jia's camera pans the gorgeous landscapes and the tragically sad faces of his characters. Jia was clearly influenced by Michelangelo Antonioni, another man who made several films about urban displacement. But Jia makes several odd decisions that Antonioni might not have, including two odd shots that use CGI and seemingly random title cards that simply say "Cigarettes," "Liquor," "Tea," and "Candy." Those particular choices make Still Life feel more like a dream than a recreation. He also peppers his screenplay with clear digs at commerce (money plays a major role, especially in the first act). Is he commenting on the perceived corruption and greed that has led to problems with The Three Gorges Dam Project? Or is he simply making note that even in a place trapped in time, money rules the day?

Still Life is a challenging film that's not for the average movie-goer. It's gorgeous to look at and fascinating to think about, but it's incredibly slow. It's the kind of film that makes you consider the pacing decisions by the filmmaker more than becoming fully invested and engrossed in the story itself. Still Life is a study more than a story, but that doesn't lessen the impact. There are great films being made all around the world that have nearly nothing in common with what's being produced in the States right now. Take the time to find Still Life to see just one of them.