Mountains May Depart
Kino Lorber | Release Date: February 12, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
79
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 23 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
5
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
We Got This CoveredMatt HoffmanSep 19, 2016
Zhao Tao’s awe-inspiring performance and the pure audacity of director Jia Zhangke make Mountains May Depart the auteur’s best effort to date. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonMar 10, 2016
Jia’s languid style and exquisite framing complement his understated approach to the material, which opts for depth over melodrama. But Mountains May Depart is grounded in Zhao’s delicate performance, which is her best. Read full review
91
The Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaFeb 9, 2016
If A Touch of Sin expressed Jia’s rage at the contemporary impact of capitalist progress on Chinese society, Mountains May Depart is his lament over the direction in which it is headed. Read full review
90
The New YorkerRichard BrodyMay 19, 2016
With audacious leaps of time and intimate echoes spanning a quarter century of intertwined lives, the director Jia Zhangke endows this romantic melodrama with vast geopolitical import. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisFeb 11, 2016
Mr. Jia’s approach means that you have to do a certain amount of interpretive work, though mostly you just have to pay attention and be a little patient. If you do, you will notice that Mountains May Depart is a movie of threes: its main characters, moments in time, narrative sections, historical symbols and even aspect ratio come in triplicate. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrMay 12, 2016
The movie sprawls, almost entirely in a good sense, and it lets the audience draw its own conclusions. None of them is likely to be rosy. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)James AdamsMar 5, 2016
Like a Chinese Balzac, Jia expertly balances the micro and the macro, the onrush of the new and the tug of tradition here, blanketing the proceedings with a pall of melancholy as palpable as the smog over Beijing. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comGodfrey CheshireFeb 12, 2016
Whatever Jia shows us and wherever he takes us, we’re always aware of being in the hands of one of the contemporary world’s great filmmakers. Read full review
83
ConsequenceBlake GobleFeb 16, 2016
Perhaps the film’s most striking quality is its restraint. Thematically and stylistically, it’s a film of quiet medium shots, long takes, and clear but evasive words. Every choice is tiny, but humane and usually deliberate. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerFeb 12, 2016
It does leave you with something, though – a deeply wistful mood, if not a full experience. It bears out the sadness in a line from Tao earlier in the film: “Nobody can be with you all through life.” Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyFeb 10, 2016
Sentimental, and plotted with the elegance of a silent film, Mountains is nearly hamstrung in its futuristic final section by one very bad performance and a whole lot of tin-eared English dialogue. Read full review
83
HitfixGregory EllwoodMay 22, 2015
Jia probably made a mistake directing the 1999 sequence in such an over-the-top and stilted tone (it also feels more like 1989 than the turn of the century), but the rest of the film is incredibly well done. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesStaff (Not Credited)Mar 24, 2016
Sequences in which Tao helps an ill friend and deals with the death of a parent are as finely staged and acted, as sorrowful and transcendent, as anything ever to grace the screen. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 24, 2015
Its generation-spanning story has serious power, and, in its masterful opening chapter and final sequence, brushes against greatness. Read full review
80
VarietyScott FoundasMay 24, 2015
If “Mountains” feels a touch schematic at times, and awkward in its third-act English-language scenes, the cumulative impact is still enormously touching, highlighted by Jia’s rapturous image-making and a luminous central performance by the director’s regular muse (and wife), Zhao Tao. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 24, 2015
The pure work-in-progress energy of all this is exhilarating, and if the resulting movie is flawed in its final act, then this is a flaw born of Jia’s heroic refusal to be content making the same sort of movie, and his insistence on trying to do something new with cinema and with storytelling. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMay 24, 2015
While that awkward final section shows Jia's lack of assurance working in English, the misstep is instantly erased in a beautiful concluding sequence that reaffirms the film's aching depth of feeling and extraordinary sense of place. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineJake ColeSep 29, 2015
It's the first segment that feels the most fleshed out, for how well it presents characters with actual lives as compared to the thinly veiled talking points of the film's second half. Read full review
60
Time OutStaff (Not credited)Feb 9, 2016
It’s an intelligent and intriguing meditation on issues concerning what it means to be Chinese in today’s and tomorrow’s world. Read full review
60
Village VoiceScott TobiasFeb 9, 2016
It's a powerful idea in the abstract, the culmination of three acts that cover a 25-year catastrophe with a time-lapse breathlessness. It just never leaves the abstract and becomes flesh. Read full review
60
Screen DailyDan FainaruMay 24, 2015
Using his characters as pawns on the chessboard of history, Mountains May Depart culminates in a nostalgic future where the Chinese look back for the identity they have lost. Read full review
60
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 24, 2015
As every section seeks to deepen and complicate the basic message of Mountains May Depart - that the incredible speed of technology and society has its prices and dangers - and the failure of the final section dilutes where it should intensify. Read full review
58
The PlaylistOliver LytteltonMay 24, 2015
Zhangke's always had a throughline regarding economic inequality and the 21st century-style Chinese capitalism in his work, but Mountains May Depart might be the director's defining statement on the way that his nation has changed over the past few decades. If only he were a touch subtler about it. Read full review
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