I’m struggling to recall why I wanted to watch Zhao Liang’s Behemoth. Not because the reason was trivial—just the opposite. For as long as I’ve been writing these reviews, I’ve striven to record the why of my media consumption. I think it had something to do with Jessica Kingdon’s outstanding Ascension, and maybe that documentary was swirling around in the algorithmic soup of YouTube’s recommendation engine. Either way, all these years later, I’ve managed to cross Behemoth off the to-watch list.
The film is a poetic masterwork that made me realize that hell is real, and portals to it dot the landscape of our little planet wherever man is given free rein with the environment. Liang weaves poetry, shattered visuals, and the human beings who toil in the shadow of the invisible hand of China’s economic monster.
One of the reasons I took so long to watch this film was that it was hard to find. The work itself is censored in China, and most Canadian educational video streaming services don’t carry it. It’s available on Grasshopper Film’s site. I bought it. It was worth it.
2025.04.27