100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
The pacing is steady. The stories are told simply, with zero affectation or buildup by the director. The effect is astonishing.
I Wish I Knew (海上传奇)
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- China
- 2010
- · 125m
Director
Jia Zhangke
Cast
Zhao Tao,
Chen Danqing,
Toon Wang,
Hou Hsiao-hsien,
Wei Wei,
Rebecca Pan
Genre
Documentary,
History
A documentary comprising the stories of Shanghai – its history, its people, and its architecture -- over the course of this port city's development from the mid-1800s to the present day. With a tone that ranges from excited to elegiac, the film explores the rapid, sometimes violent changes that shaped the city’s past, and their impact on the present day.
Stream I Wish I Knew
What are critics saying?
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Guy Dixon
The pacing is steady. The stories are told simply, with zero affectation or buildup by the director. The effect is astonishing.
90
Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele
What ensues amidst Jia’s indelible, gliding visuals of modern Shanghai are ruminative testimonials from the breadth of an older citizenry — former soldiers, descendants of gangsters and politicians, and (lots of) artists who endured the city’s turbulent evolution, and who in their stories of family, love and survival form a tapestry of memory and wisdom.
90
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
In effect, with I Wish I Knew, Jia is building not just a portrait of a city, but of a fragmented people — one story and memory at a time. He is finding meaning in collective remembrance and revealing a world, to borrow a phrase from Walter Benjamin, “under the gaze of the melancholy man.”
83
The A.V. Club by Lawrence Garcia
Even in shortened form, I Wish I Knew can at times feel overly discursive. But its implications, particularly regarding the Cultural Revolution, are difficult to miss.
75
RogerEbert.com by Glenn Kenny
Even without access to all that it references, I Wish I Knew functions as an admirable cinematic tone poem about a place and its times.
70
The New Yorker by Richard Brody
Wondrous yet rueful views of the city, with its blend of grandeur and squalor, are anchored by the wanderings of an actress, Zhao Tao, whose mysterious role is clarified by one of the most anguished of testimonies.
67
The Film Stage
The film is about the way we remember, from individuals looking back on the stories of life that their grandparents told them to the camera itself acting reflective of a time that’s destined to be finite.
67
The Film Stage by Logan Kenny
The film is about the way we remember, from individuals looking back on the stories of life that their grandparents told them to the camera itself acting reflective of a time that’s destined to be finite.
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