Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Under the sun, the heavenly beauty of grasslands will soon be covered by the raging dust of mines. Facing the ashes and noises caused by heavy mining , the herdsmen have no choice but to leave as the meadow areas dwindle. In the moonlight, iron mines are brightly lit throughout the night. Workers who operate the drilling machines must stay awake. The fight is tortuous, against the machine and against themselves. Meanwhile, coal miners are busy filling trucks with coals. Wearing a coal-dust mask, they become ghostlike creatures. An endless line of trucks will transport all the coals and iron ores to the iron works. There traps another crowd of souls, being baked in hell. In the hospital, time hangs heavy on miners' hands. After decades of breathing coal dust, death is just around the corner. They are living the reality of purgatory, but there will be no paradise.
Behemoth is a visually striking documentary by Zhao Liang that draws explicit parallels to Dante's Inferno to indict China's coal and iron mining industry. Its cinematography is genuinely exceptional — sweeping, painterly shots of ravaged grasslands, hellish smelting works, and ghostlike miners create an almost mythic visual language that elevates the film well above average for the documentary form. The Dantesque structural conceit gives it a degree of novelty, though the broader theme of industrial pollution and human cost is well-trodden documentary territory. As a non-narrative documentary, conventional acting assessments don't apply, and the human subjects are observed rather than performing, limiting that dimension. The ending, while tonally resonant — returning to a vision of abandoned paradise — is somewhat expected given the film's allegorical framework. Overall a prestigious, sobering work with extraordinary imagery at its core.