Jia Zhangke’s Still Life (2006) and Patrick Keiller’s London (1994) are both deeply nostalgic films, but in wildly different way. While it’s obvious that Still Life is especially nostalgic at a narrative level, it’s also concerned with the politics and geography of China (specifically Fengjie). The same (though for somewhat different reasons) is true of London. I would even go as far as to say that they are both nostalgic for a certain type of infrastructure, though both seem to be tipping opposite ends of the same scale.
Still Life, while its main characters, Sanming and Shen Hong, are both deeply concerned with their pasts (Sanming attempting to rectify his botched marriage with his estranged wife and Shen Hong attempting to cut ties with her husband she no longer loves), the film is also nostalgic for a infrastructureless China. Throughout the film, the spectator is shown how capitalism has been rushing its way into Fengjie, destroying the lives of people that have lived there for generations. A new bureaucratic system has been put in place that severely confuses both the citizens of Fengjie (as illustrated by the unpaid, arguing townsfolk and the lost Sanming) and the employees of the system (the government man who’s trying to explain his situation to the townsfolk and the irritated secretary dealing with Sanming). All of these people are upset in someway that things have become more complicated since the introduction of capitalistic industrialization into Fengjie, which is epitomized by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. It seems that even the government is nostalgic for an infrastructureless Fengjie, as the imagery on the printed money is of the rivers before their capitalistic contaminations.
Keiller’s London is, on the other hand, nostalgic for a hyper-infrastructured London. Throughout the film, Robinson is constantly worrying about the reelection of the current government because they will ruin infrastructural things that are already on the decline in London, such as the transportation systems. Robinson seems to be alluding to the idea that a London existed where these things were perfect or ideal, and that with the reelection of a highly conservative government, these infrastructural necessities will rapidly disintegrate, making the lives of Londoners far worse.
Both films seem to preside on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to infrastructure and what it means to live in a modern city. Jia Zhangke seems to want to evoke feelings of nostalgia by contrasting modernity with tradition, whereas Keiller seems to believe that modernity can be beneficial to a point, but to surpass that point is to essentially sign any cities death certificate.
Film and Architecture 
This is a wonderful comparison of STILL LIFE and LONDON through their respective nostalgia for infrastructure. You persuasively claim that Keiller’s film hinges on the memory of a time when infrastructure worked properly, and for the public good–prior to its defunding by the Tories. This seems to recall what Thom Andersen, in his piece on GET OUT OF THE CAR, calls “militant” nostalgia, which looks to the past as a critique of the present, and in anticipation of a different future. And I admire the way you contrast this with Jia’s critique of the Three Gorges Dam project. Your points here remind me of Larkin’s insights about the affective dimensions of infrastructure, and the way the emotions it generates mediate between citizens and the states. I’m a bit less convinced that Jia’s nostalgia is for a China devoid of infrastructure entirely, since that seems to suggest a rejection of modernity that is itself a kind of fantasy. Here, I’m reminded of the way communications infrastructure (cell phones, for example) seem to produce forms of belonging and attachment with ties both to the past, the present, and the future. In other words, I’m not sure the film is structured by a strong binary between vanished “tradition” and threatening “modernity,” but is rather interested in uneven, hybrid, or disjunctive temporalities that are neither one nor the other, but seem to be the times in which many of China’s citizens live. Your post also raises the question of how Jia’s SF imagery is connected, or not, to the nostalgia you identify so smartly.
LikeLike