Start the week with a film: Texture and layers in murder mystery ‘Only the River Flows’

Some murder mysteries lose their allure when the killer’s identity is revealed. Only the River Flows is not that kind of movie.

Chinese director Wei Shujun’s film has the atmospherics, open-endedness and enigma that are often missing from the usual blunt-edged procedural. Only the River Flows (2023), adapted from acclaimed Chinese writer Yun Hua’s novel Mistakes by the River, is a cerebral crime drama that alludes to the changes sweeping across rural China in the 1990s.

Only the River Flows is set in 1995 in a village, where a flowing river proves to be the only element that is predictable. An old woman is clubbed to death by the riverside. The police chief instructs detective Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong) to solve the case quickly.

An abandoned cinema hall is repurposed as the investigation unit. The strict, taciturn and chain-smoking Ma Zhe quickly arrives at the modus operandi, but he’s flummoxed when there are more murders. Is a serial killer at work?

Ma Zhe isn’t satisfied with the person designated as the perpetrator. His probe carries on even after he has submitted his official report, amidst his wife’s difficult pregnancy and pressure from his superiors.

The Mandarin-language film is available on Prime Video. The murder investigation in Only the River Flows expands into a subtly allegorical portrait of a fast-changing...

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