A fading, jumbled memory: ‘Caught by the Tides’ feels profound

Jia Zhangke embodies the idea of cinema as collective memory in a masterful and beautiful mess

Using archival footage spanning 22 years, filmmaker Jia Zhangke creates a piece that feels more like the way humans remember than a film driven by conventional coherence—and that’s exactly why I was so enamored with Caught by the Tides.

The film (VERY) loosely follows the experience of a woman named Qiao Qiao, played by Zhao Tao, and her relationship with a man named Bin, played by Li Zhubin. But the story between them is impressionistic and simple on the surface, with many of the details left to our imagination. This film is less concerned with these specific individuals and more focused on how they relate to the broader culture around them. Over the span of the film, we see China evolve from an emerging country into a global superpower, leaving behind many of the characters we meet early on as they age—making way for a new generation shaped by technology and unburdened by the memories of past struggles.

The images are stitched together less through dialogue and traditional narrative structure, and more through music—and occasionally through title cards that harken back to silent films. These choices, and the structure (or lack thereof), might come across as tedious to some viewers. But if you connect with the film and allow it to take you wherever it wants to go, without expectation, it becomes exhilarating not knowing where we’ll end up next.

While rooted in the specific context of China, the film speaks to a more universal theme of impermanence. The places where memories were made disappear. The ambitions we held in our youth fade. The world continues to move forward, no matter how much we want to slow it down. Songs that were once new and exciting become nostalgic classics. Faces change. And eventually, all of our experiences will be forgotten. This is where the film transcends narrative and becomes a memory of its own—one so specific that it even felt familiar to someone like me, from Nebraska by way of Colorado and Texas. Maybe the details differ, but the feelings are the same.