Un elefante sentado quieto

The film is set in the northern Chinese industrial city of Shijiazhuang in the Hebei province.^[10] Filming occurred in Shijiazhuang over the course of twenty-five days in March and April 2017.^[11] Fan Chao, the film's cinematographer, shot with a handheld camera and frequently used tracking shots.^[10] This was a result of low budget: Hu originally intended to film statically and with wide angles, but it was too expensive.^[12]

Hu Bo wrote, directed, and edited the film himself. Production began in 2016 when he took his screenplay to FIRST Film Festival in Xining for financing. The screenplay was noticed by producer Liu Xuan, who then took it to her husband Wang Xiaoshuai. He ended up producing the film. Reportedly, Hu struggled at this time with maintaining creative control over the project, as well as making enough money from it to be able to live. He described the experience as "humiliation, despair and powerlessness" online, and was berated by Wang who also posted that the film was a "mess." His relationship began deteriorating with Wang because of this.^[13]

The final straw came when Wang attempted to convince Hu to cut his film down from 230 minutes to 120 minutes. Those close to Hu reported that this pressure was a major reason Hu committed suicide after production of the film was over. Wang Xiaoshuai's name was scrubbed from the press kit credits, but his production company remained attached.^[13]

La película se proyectó por primera vez el 16 de febrero de 2018 en el 68.º Festival Internacional de Cine de Berlín en la sección Forum. ^{[ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ]} Fue uno de los tres jóvenes directores chinos que pudieron entrar gracias a sus productores chinos de mayor renombre, ^{[ 13 ]} parte de una tendencia creciente en la representación de películas independientes en la Berlinale. A la luz del suicidio de Hu, la sección de preguntas y respuestas del estreno fue reemplazada por discursos de la madre de Hu y su profesor de la escuela de cine, Wang Hongwei. El corte de 230 minutos fue elegido para este lanzamiento y los posteriores en todo el mundo. ^{[ 10 ]} La película se mostró luego en el 42.º Festival Internacional de Cine de Hong Kong , donde ganó el Premio del Público. ^{[ 14 ]} Se proyectó en festivales hasta su estreno general en el Reino Unido el 14 de diciembre de 2018 y en los Estados Unidos el 8 de marzo de 2019.

El 18 de noviembre de 2019, la película tuvo su estreno en streaming en Criterion Channel. ^{[ 15 ]} El 10 de diciembre de 2019, la película se lanzó en Blu-ray. ^{[ 16 ]}

An emotional Béla Tarr, when presenting the film to an international audience, said that he felt he had done too little to prevent the suicide of his protégé, that the great film will be remembered forever, and that people should look after individuals like Hu.^[17]An Elephant Sitting Still was acclaimed by critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 94%, with an average rating of 8.40/10, based on 52 critics, the critic consensus says "A remarkable debut that sadly serves as its creator's epitaph, An Elephant Sitting Still offers an uncompromisingly grim yet poignant portrait of life in modern China."^[18] On Metacritic, the film has a score (using a weighted average) of 86 out of 100, indicating "universal acclaim".^[19]Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times wrote that although the film has "a soap opera season's worth of romantic indiscretions, sudden deaths, unfortunate accidents, provoked and unprovoked attacks", the story "somehow never loses its sense of balance and modulation." Chang argued that the work had a consoling insight that the characters are all worth knowing despite their flaws, and lauded it as "a triumph of bold sociopolitical critique and intimate human portraiture, and a reminder that you rarely encounter the one without the other."^[20]

David Ehrlich, who assigned the film an "A−" rating in IndieWire, argued that An Elephant Sitting Still "has little interest in the conventional drama of cause and effect, and its fractured structure is used to emphasize the distance between these people rather than the ties that bind them together." He characterized it as a searching film that avoids "[contriving] an empty solution for the demoralized".^[21] Justine Smith, who awarded the film 3.5/4 stars, praised the film's portrayal of love in a system of inequality and oppression. She argued that Hu simultaneously suggests that love in a devastated system "means tethering yourself to people who have long been broken by mistreatment and inequality and who no longer have the capacity to return it", but also that love and beauty are "a constant source of minute, if not fleeting, pleasure." Smith referred to this as a "realistic" portrayal of love in such a system and billed the film's ending as "one of the greatest in contemporary film history", though also referred to the film as "overwhelmingly grey".^[22]

En The New Yorker , Richard Brody elogió An Elephant Sitting Still como una de las mejores películas recientes, escribiendo que Hu "construye una intrincada red de conexiones plagadas de conflictos entre los personajes principales de la película" y que las "volátiles y errantes tomas largas persiguen a los personajes hasta los rincones más profundos de su explosiva desesperación". Brody argumentó que la "visión de Hu transmite una poderosa y universal desesperación humana". ^{[ 23 ]} Matthew Thrift de Little White Lies elogió la película como "sin duda uno de los debuts más sólidos de la memoria reciente", argumentando que "la notable seguridad de la dirección de Hu proporciona un impulso inquieto. Es una película en constante movimiento, siguiendo al gato y al ratón por las calles de la ciudad. [...] El conflicto nace del personaje y las circunstancias, en lugar de la artificiosidad narrativa o la estructura dramática tradicional". ^{[ 24 ]}

An Elephant Sitting Still ha sido considerada por numerosos críticos y publicaciones como una de las mejores películas de 2018/2019.