Movie Review: Ash is Purest White

Ash Is Purest White **** / *****

Directed by: Zhangke Jia.

Written by: Zhangke Jia.

Starring: Tao Zhao, Fan Liao, Yi'nan Diao, Xiaogang Feng, Zheng Xu, Yibai Zhang.

 

It’s not surprising to learn that Jia Zhangke’s latest film, Ash is Purest White, is made up of material that he didn’t use when making some of his previous films – Unknown Pleasures, Still Life – and uses a structure very much like his last film, Mountains May Depart. In many ways, Ash is Purest White, feels like a career summation, up to this point of Jia’s career – not quite a greatest hits collection, but not terribly far from it either. What is surprising is that given this, Ash is Purest White doesn’t really feel like a retread – doesn’t feel like Jia on autopilot. He has taken elements of his previous films, yes, but he has packaged them in a way that points in a new direction.

 

The film is basically split into three different sections, spanning more than a decade. In the first section we are in the same town Jia made Unknown Pleasures – and the film is focused on the same kind of characters there, who are drifting aimlessly through their days. The film focuses on Qiao (the great Tao Zhao, still Jia’s muse), who is the girlfriend of Bin (newcomer Fan Liao), who is a powerful local gangster (although it’s arguable what being a gangster here actually means – other than to be violent). When his life is at risk in a fight, she gets his gun and fires it off into the air – an action that leads her to spend 5 years in prison, while Bin gets away unscathed. When the prison sentence is over, Qiao goes on a journey to reconnect with Bin – we’re now in the same time and place as Jia’s Still Life (complete with the same unexplained alien spaceship). But Bin has moved on – he’s gone legitimate now, although he’s now a bitter, angry man who cruelly refuses to see Qiao for most of this section. The third part is set today – back in the same hometown of the first segment – with Qiao now running things in her understated way, when Bin returns – needing help.

 

There is a cyclical nature to Ash is Purest White – which essentially tells a similar story in each one of the three segments, when Qiao does everything she can do for Bin – who essentially does nothing to deserve such loyalty. In every other way, Qiao seems independent and smart – able to get by all by herself – but with Bin, she is in love and cannot help herself. Bin is, by contrast, weak and ineffectual – allowing Qiao to sacrifice herself for him, with nothing in return.

 

This is, of course, the point of Ash is Purest White – which like all of Jia’s work looks at the mixed blessing of China’s modernization. There is a lot of travel on display in the film – Qiao goes great distances throughout the film, but various different means of travel. And yet, no matter how long she travels, no matter how many things change, her relationship stays the same. The more they change, the more they stay the same.

 

As always, Tao is great in the film – doing a lot with very little in the way of phony dramatics – right up until the great, ambiguous ending of the film, shot on a security camera. The triptych structure works better here than it did in Mountains May Depart (where is till worked very well) – but perhaps it just feels that way, because this time, Tao is the center of all three segments (she wasn’t in the third one in that film). After watching Ash is Purest White, I do admit that I’m not quite sure where Jia goes from here – he’s young to be doing this kind of career summation work. Perhaps we will see something very different next time – or perhaps, like his characters here, the more things change, the more they’ll stay the same.

Movie Review: Mountains May Depart

Mountain May Depart

Directed by: Zhangke Jia.

Written by: Zhangke Jia.

Starring: Tao Zhao (Tao), Yi Zhang (Zhang Jinsheng), Jing Dong Liang (Liangzi), Zijian Dong (Dollar), Sylvia Chang (Mia).

 

Jia Zhangke has become China’s leading director of the past two decades by making films about the double edged sword that is China’s opening to the West and moving towards capitalism. He often makes films set in his small hometown of Fenyang, a mining community, which stands in for China at large. He has been a controversial filmmaker in China – his first few films were done without state sanction, and although since 2004’s The World, he has had that, that doesn’t mean his films always get released there – like his last film, the masterpiece A Touch of Sin, about the rise in random violence in China, which won a prize at Cannes, was released around the world, had a release date set in China, and then just didn’t come out (as far as I know, that’s still true of that film). His follow-up to that film, Mountains May Depart, finds Jia in familiar territory – make in Fenyang, for a triptych of stories – one in 1999, one in 2014 and one in 2025 – that focuses on one family, and those that surround them. Jia uses different aspect ratios for each section – starting very boxy in 1999 (1.37:1), expanding in 2014 (1.85:1) and even more in 2025 (2.35:1). With each segment, the world open to these characters expands, and yet they grow increasingly isolated and disconnected from each other.

 

The first, and longest, segment of the film initially seems like the most hopeful. The film opens with a wonderful choreographed dance number set to the Pet Shop Boys “Go West” (a staple of my middle school dances – and now I feel old), sung by Tao (the amazing Tao Zhao, Jia’s wife and frequent star) and others celebrating the New Year. A love triangle forms around the pretty Tao as both the wealthy entrepreneur, Zhang (Yi Zhang) and the poorer mining worker Liangzi (Jing Dong Loang) fall for her, which of course ruins the friendship the three of them had (it makes it hard to be friends with someone who buys the mine you work for, and then fires you). It would be easy to think that Tao picks Zhang because of his money – and perhaps that is part of it. But more than that, there are other reasons – Zhang is better looking, more effortlessly charming, and unlike Liangzi, who more quietly sulks, he actually makes his feelings known to Tao (it’s obvious Liangzi feels the same way – but he never says it). The segment, that starts on that high note of Go West, and for a while feels like a lot of fun, where all the characters are hopeful for their future, becomes melancholy by the end – Tao needs to make a decision, and no matter what she does, that closes other doors, and people will get hurt.

 

The second segment takes place 15 years later, in 2014. Zhang has become even wealthier than he was in 1999 – but he and Tao are now divorced. He’s moved to Shanghai – taking their son with them – and she’s alone in Fenyeng (Liangzi hasn’t been there in years). When her father dies, she gets her son back for a few days – but it’s clear that neither one of them really know what to say to each other. Her son, named Dollar, has a life in Shanghai – and a new stepmother (he calls her Mommy), and barely knows Tao, who now has a lot of money, but is desperately alone and lonely. Liangzi returns to Fenyeng because he needs money – years of working in the mines has made him sick.

 

The third segment takes place in Australia, in 2025 – and is almost entirely in English, Dollar (now played by Zijian Dong) is an University student, who hasn’t seen his mother in years, no longer speaks any language other than English, and has grown distant from his father – who has become a paranoid gun nut, who it is strongly implied fled China before he could be arrested. Dollar feels disconnected from everything – he wants to drop out of school, but he does develop a bond – and then something deeper – with his teacher, Mia (Sylvia Chang), who is old enough to be his mother. She’s from Hong Kong, and initially left for Toronto in 1996, and has now moved to Australia following her divorce.

 

It must be said that the third segment doesn’t quite live up to the first two segments for a couple of reasons. The first being that Jia seems slightly uncomfortable working in English, and the dialogue sounds more than a little stilted at times, particularly when spoken by Zijan Dong, who gives the weakest performance in the film. The other reason is that Tao has been the emotional anchor of the film – and she’s all but absent in the third part of the movie. There is brief sequence at the beginning of the second segment that also doesn’t focus on Tao (it focuses on Liangzi), but for the most part, the film has been about her – and when the film leaves her behind, it suffers a little bit. The presence of Sylvia Chang certainly helps – but even she isn’t as good as Tao Zhao. Yet, even if this segment isn’t quite as strong as the other two, it does fall completely in line thematically with what Jia is doing, making its flaws a little easier to take. It is not surprising that it is her the film returns to in its final moments 0 providing an absolutely perfect bookend to the movie.

 

Mountains May Depart isn’t quite the film A Touch of Sin was – that film had the advantage of being more stylized and violent, and also angry, pulling us along with more urgency. Mountains May Depart is a sadder film – a slow film, that sees what China is becoming, and isn’t hopeful for what is coming next. The film is less overt in its political commentary than his earlier, neo-realist films like Platform (2000), but his critique is no less pointed or on target, and more resigned (after all, the characters in Mountains May Depart were optimistic in 1999 – and there is at least some of that in Platform as well, as they didn’t know quite where things were head). Mountains May Depart is not a perfect film – but it is an excellent one – and further proof that Jia Zhangke is one of the best filmmakers in the world right now.

Movie Review: A Touch of Sin

A Touch of Sin
Directed by: Zhangke Jia.
Written by: Zhangke Jia.
Starring: Wu Jiang (Dahai), Baoqiang Wang (Zhou San), Tao Zhao (Xiao Yu), Lanshan Luo (Xiao Hui).

Throughout his entire career, Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke has been interested in documenting the changing economic landscape of China – that has been sold as a good thing that provides more freedom and opportunity for the people of China, but the reality is much more complex than the officially sanctioned version. Up until A Touch of Sin however, his films have been rather mournful, a series of sad indictments of the new system, and its failures. On the surface, A Touch of Sin seems like a major departure for Jia – this is a brutally violent, bloody film, that uses old school Wuxia films as a visual influence. Yet underneath the violent, angry surface of Jia’s film, lies the same concerns. The characters in A Touch of Sin are not all that different than the ones in Jia’s Platform, Unknown Pleasures, The World or Still Life – they are just a little older, and a whole lot angrier.

A Touch of Sin takes four true life incidents – three that end in murder, one in suicide – that Jia says represents a disturbing new trend of seemingly random violence in China. The movie traverses pretty much the entire country, and in four half hour segments show four characters that have simply had enough, and eventually snap. Only one of these characters seems at ease with what he does – and endeavors to get away with it.

The first segment is about Dahai (Wu Jiang), an angry man who lives in a village who more than a decade ago sold off their mining rights to a private company. As part of that deal, 40% of the profits were supposed to be funneled back into the village itself – something that hasn’t happened. Meanwhile, the owner of the company has become rich – his latest purchase is a private jet. The village Chief won’t take Dahai’s complaint seriously – and Dahai is convinced he’s on the take. The other villagers either don’t seem to care, or else are too scared to say anything for fear of reprisals – and after what happens to Dahai when he voices his objection, it’s no wonder. The entire segment builds to a violent finale – a brutal, bloody killing spree that would make Sergio Leone (or Quentin Tarantino) proud.

The film that switches focus to Zhou San (Baoqiang Wang) – or more accurately, refocuses on him, as the movie opens with a very brief scene of him on a motorcycle being confronted by the three thugs who would have been better off to leave him alone. Zhou San seems to be a drifter, travelling the country either by motorcycle or boat, wearing his Chicago Bulls toque (the fact that Chicago has its own epidemic of gun crime is no coincidence). He comes back to his hometown on the occasion of his mother’s 70^th birthday (at New Years) – and visits briefly with his wife and son. He isn’t there long, but the portrait we get of his more “respectable” brothers makes you think they’re crooks like him – but just in a different way. Before long, he heads back onto the road – and planning and executing his latest killing and robbery. His story is not unlike the ones in the documentary Last Train Home – about workers who depending on the season, travel the country for work, only to return at New Year’s. Zhou San, like them, goes to where the work is.

Next up is the story of Xiao Yu (played by perpetual Jia muse Tao Zhao). She is a woman in love with a married man, who is getting tired of his promises to leave his wife and be with her. Yet, at the train station saying goodbye, she agrees to give him another six months to decide what he wants to do – before going back to her job as a receptionist at a “massage parlor” – where she greets the exclusively male clientele with the question “Sauna or the night?”, letting everyone know what kind of massage parlor this is. She will have two violent confrontations during her segment – first when the wife of the man she’s having an affair with confronts her – goons in tow – and second when a pair of men (who we have seen in a previous segment) demand that she be the one who gives them a “massage” – finally pushing her to the point where she snaps.

The movie ends with the saddest segment – as it tell the story of Xiao Hui (Lanshan Luo), who works at a factory when the segment begins – only to have to leave that job because of an accident. He then works as a wait at an “upscale” hotel – and falls for one of the female employees there, who has to dress in degrading outfits, and dance for the male clientele again – until they want something more for them. He again leaves that job – and another – and under pressure from home to send more money, he too, will eventually snap.

A Touch of Sin is an angry film. If the previous films made by Jia were about the downside of China’s conversion to capitalism – A Touch of Sin is still about that transition, but is about more hopeless characters – people who cannot see another way out for themselves. Jia was disturbed by the rising “random” violence in China – and that is what inspired him to make the film. But the Jia, the violence is anything but random – it comes out of people in hopeless economic situations. Social issues are at the heart of the violence, and to Jia it’s only going to get worse. The film is also a technical marvel. The title is a play on the wuxia film classic A Touch of Zen, directed by King Hu, who Jia considers an major influence on his film. Though widely seen as simple kung fu films, Jia sees in the work of Hu a social and political elements. The film has been impeccably crafted, both in the more realistic sequences, and the stylized violence.

Jia Zhnagke has long since been a favorite of film critics, even if his films have never made much of a dent at the North American box office. He was cited by different polls in magazines such as Film Comment and Cinemascope as one of the best directors of the last decade. If Jia is ever to have a breakthrough film – and I doubt he will – A Touch of Sin could, and should, be that film. Because in many ways it is a genre film, Western audiences will be more comfortable with it that his previous films, that took a more realistic (and at times surrealistic) approach to his themes. But the film is every inch a Jia Zhangke film. It’s just that over time, he – like the characters in this film – has become angrier. This is one of the year’s best films.

The Best Films I've Never Seen Before: Unknown Pleasures (2002)

Unknown Pleasures (2002) *** ½ 

Directed by: Jia Zhangke.

Written by: Jia Zhangke.

Starring: Wei Wei Zhao (Bin Bin), Qiong Wu (Xiao Ji), Tao Zhao (Qiao Qiao), Qing Feng Zhou (Yuan Yuan), Hongwei Wang (Xiao Wu), Ru Bai (Bin Bin's mother), Xi An Liu (Xiao Ji's father), Shou Lin Xu (Sister Zhu), Ren Ai Jun (Hairdresser), Dao Xiao (Mr. Ren), Zi Ying (Concubine).

Jia Zhangke became a star of the festival circuit and a world renowned director with his 2000 film Platform (previously reviewed as part of this series). That film was his masterpiece – a decade spanning film that looked at China’s transition from Maoism to Capitalism, focusing on a young theater group between 1980 and 1990, and the subtle changes that affected their day to day lives. His next film was Unknown Pleasures in 2002, and while it is a very good film in its own right, it also felt a little like a step back for Jia. It wasn’t that the film was bad – it is an expertly crafted film – but just that it lacked a little of the ambition of Platform. It actually feels more like a film that Jia would have made leading up to Platform, instead of as a follow-up.

The film concentrates on two Chinese youths – Bin Bin (Wei Wei Zhao) and Xiao Ji (Qiong Wu). They have graduated high school a few years ago, and are now essentially drifting. Bin Bin had a job in a grocery store, but he didn’t like taking orders, so now he has joined Xiao Ji in essentially doing nothing. Bin Bin has a girlfriend, still in high school, but they do little except sit in a dark room watching cartoons. His girlfriend is about to go off to college in Beijing to study International Trade, and is excited to see the news about the WTO. Bin Bin couldn’t care less.  Xiao Ji has a crush on a singer, Qiao Qiao (Jia regular Tao Zhao), who is under the control of her “agent”, who also happens to be her former gym teacher. She works promoting a malt liquor company, and at times is also a prostitute. Xiao Ji comes on to her with the pathetic line “I’ll make you soften faster than instant noodles”, but she rejects him – at least at first.

The Chinese title of the movie translates literally into “Free From All Constraints”, and while that is a less catchy title than Unknown Pleasures, it is certainly a more accurate one. Like many of Jia’s characters, Bin Bin, Xiao Ji and to a lesser extent Qiao Qiao are certainly free to do whatever they want to do – it just so happens that in the case of the two boys, they have chosen to do nothing. They walk around their sad little home town, smoking, going to the occasional club, which looks like a rundown factory and trying to figure out what to do. They have glommed onto to Western culture, as evidenced in a scene where Xiao Ji describes the opening scene of Pulp Fiction to Bin Bin, and tries to get him to do something similar, leading to the sad climax of the movie. Qiao Qiao is different from the boys because she actually does have a dream – to be a famous singer, but she’s only adequate at her job, and she is under the control of her manager as evidenced in a scene where she continually tries to get up and walk out of the trailer he holds her in, and he just keep shoving her down. She keeps getting up, and he keeps shoving her down. Certainly she is not “free from all constraints”, but as in many of Jia’s films, has just traded one set of constraints for another.

Jia is at the forefront of Chinese filmmaking right now. His films detail his country in transition – of dealing with the consequences of being a capitalist society, and the human toll it is taking on the country. Surely, he does not view the “old China” under Mao as romantic or idealized, but neither does he see the new country as all that much better. The people are still poor, still forced to work menial jobs. They have freedom in name only, as they are still economically kept down.

I like Unknown Pleasures. Like all of Jia’s films, the film is visually assured – he favors holding his shots for long periods of time, and simply letting the scenes play out in front of the camera. The acting in his films is always great, as it is here.

For me though, Unknown Pleasures is a transition film – as his next film The World (2004) would also be – between his two masterworks, Platform and Still Life. It’s as if having a major accomplishment like Platform on his resume somewhat handcuffed Jia, and he couldn’t quite figure out how to push past it to move onto other things. If he hadn’t had made Platform, I think Unknown Pleasures would be held in higher regard than it is. But he did. Such is the burden of being a filmmaker capable of making masterpieces.

The Best Films I've Never Seen Before: The World (2004)

The World (2004) *** ½

Directed by: Jia Zhangke

Written by: Jia Zhangke.

Starring: Tao Zhao (Tao), Taisheng Chen (Taisheng), Jue Jing (Wei), Zhong-wei Jiang (Niu), Yiqun Huang (Qun), Hongwei Wang (Sanlai), Jing Dong Liang (Tao's ex-boyfriend), Shuai Ji (Erxiao), Wan Xiang (Youyou), Alla Shcherbakova (Anna), Sanming Han (Sanming), Juan Iu (Yanqing).

It takes courage to call a film The World, as the title implies a certain all encompassing, epic scope that few, if any films, could possibly live up to. But in the case of Jia Zhangke’s 2004 film, the title is appropriate. It is a film about an amusement park in China called The World, but it also looks at where the world is at this stage in its economic development. Jia has always been a filmmaker who has examined China’s continuing economic and political reinvention – from communism to capitalism – and both the positive and negative things that it entails. In The World, he even reaches slightly beyond China’s borders.

The World is perhaps the saddest amusement park I have ever seen in a film. It’s whole purpose is to recreate all the planet’s landmarks, at a reduced scale, all in one spot. As a voice over the loud speaker tells visitors – “You can visit the entire world without leaving Beijing!”, as if that is a good thing. Tour guides show visitors their Eiffel Tower, and one even brags that while September 11^th got rid of the real Twin Towers, the park still has theirs for all to see.

The people who work at the park at sad, lonely people. They didn’t really see this as their future under the new capitalist regime in China. Their jobs are thuddingly dull and boring – and worse rather pointless. The visitors to the park, who are not shown in great detail, don’t seem to be getting much joy out of their visit – and the same is definitely true for the people who work there. When an ex-boyfriend shows up to visit Tao (Jia regular Tao Zhao) on his way to starting a new job elsewhere, she is embarrassed by her surroundings – and more embarrassed by her brash boyfriend, who seems to take pleasure in the fact that he owns a car, so he can drive her ex-boyfriend to the train station. She is so embarrassed, that she ends up insisting they leave when her ex goes to buy snacks for his journey – but that’s okay, because you get the feeling that the ex just wanted an excuse to leave as well, and was probably not coming back.

The World resembles Jia’s earlier films – Platform and Unknown Pleasures (the former has already been reviewed in this series, the later will be posted at some point in the near future) – in the portrait is paints of a people living a life in transition. As with the characters in those films, these people are “free” to do what they want – work as they choose, which is an advantage that their ancestors did not have. But now, they are living a life without purpose – without fulfillment – working at a dead end job that has no future. Yet, China has become an economic powerhouse – so much so that people are no longer leaving to work elsewhere, but they are actually bringing in people from other countries to fill jobs in China. We meet a group of Russian women, who come to the park to be dancers. They are told by their “handler” to hand over their passports. It is easier this way, he tells them, because now you won’t lose them. After a few shorts weeks at the park, the one Russian woman we’ve come to now – Anna (Alla Shcherbakova), confesses in broken Mandarin to Tao, her only friend, that she is going to leave to start a new job. The next time we see Anna, it’s at a nightclub – where it becomes clear that she is working as a prostitute, and when Tao sees her, she is so ashamed, she breaks down in tears.

To me, The World like Jia’s previous film Unknown Pleasures (2002) is a transition film between Zia’s two masterpieces – Platform (2000) and Still Life (2006). After Platform, which made Jia one of the most important directors in China, he didn’t quite seem to know what to do next. As good as Unknown Pleasures and The World are – and they are both very good – they do seem a little like Jia is treading water, figuring out where to go to next. The World is the better film – more ambitious in scope, including more characters, and introducing us to characters from outside China, whose economic reality is even worse than those inside the country. Jia even tries his hand at animation, with a few sequences thrown in, and while they look wonderful, they do feel at least slightly out of place. With Still Life, he moved beyond these films, into a quietly moving and profound movie. Here, Jia, while he has made an excellent film, is searching for a way out of the corner he painted himself into by making a masterpiece like Platform. That he found his way out is cause for celebration. That he made a film as good as The World, while trying to do so is remarkable.

The Best Films I've Never Seen Before: Still Life (2006)

Still Life (2006) ****
Directed by: Jia Zhangke.
Written by: Jia Zhangke.
Starring: Sanming Han (Sanming), Tao Zhao (Shen Hong), Zhou Lan (Huang Mao), Lizhen Ma (Missy Ma), Hongwei Wang (Wang Dongming).

For years, while Jia Zhangke was establishing himself as one of the best directors in the world, people in his own country of China had to see his films on pirated DVDs. He worked outside the Chinese movie system, which meant that his films were for all intents and purposes, banned. Still Life (2006) was the first of his films that the Chinese government officially allowed to be seen. But unlike a filmmaker like Zhang Yimou, who went from angered Chinese officials with his 1990 film Ju Dou, to making films that celebrated China and even ended up directing the country’s Olympic Opening Ceremonies, Still Life is just as critical of China, and the confused place the country currents sits in as the rest of Jia’s films. Like his 2000 masterpiece Platform, Still Life is about the changing economic landscape of China – from State run communist to State appoved capitalism, and how even with this freedom, the Chinese people really aren’t any better off.

The movie takes place in a small town along the Yangtze River, where all the residents are going to have to be relocated because of the massive Three Gorges Dam, that will end up flooding their town (Jia has said he thinks the reason why the Chinese government approved this film was because the Three Gorges dam and its effect of the people is too big to try and cover up). In total, a million people have been displaced because of this massive dam – the biggest in the world – that was made to produce electricity for the country.

But Jia’s film is not just a political statement on the dam. It is an immensely human drama, about two people, who never meet, but come to this town for the same basic purpose. Sanming (Sanming Han) once purchased his wife from this town, but once she had their child, a daughter, she fled back to where she came from. Sanming has not seen or heard from her in 16 years, and when he arrives, with a scrap of paper that has the address she left for him 16 years before, he discovers that the house in already underwater. He goes to see his brother in law, who he has never met, and he tells him that his wife is away, and won’t be back for a while. Rather than pack up and head back home to the coal mines where he has worked his entire life, he gets a job in town – picking up a hammer to help smash the building in the area that will soon be flooded.

About half way into the movie, with no resolution for Sanming (at least not yet, as Jia will come back to him to finish the film), the film shifts to focus on Shen Hong (Tao Zhao), who husband is working on the dam, and two years ago simply stopped coming home. She still gets a phone call from him once in a while, simply to check in to see if she is still alive. He has even gone as far as to give her a phone number without the correct number of digits so she cannot contact him. Like Sanming, she comes to find her errant spouse, not sure what she is to find.

By focusing on the human element, rather than simply the dam itself and its implications, Jia has made a film that is sad and humane. His camera glides effortlessly along, capturing some of the most memorable and beautiful images in any film in recent memory (that he shot the film digitally makes the feat all the more impressive). He observes his characters dwarfed by their surroundings – the massive mountains in the background, the shattered city coming down around them. Although the film focuses on two outsiders to this area, the film is just as much about the city – and its inhabitants – as it is about the main characters. The men Sanming work with all plan on joining him in the coal mines when they are down destroying their city and are forced to move. They have nowhere else to go.

Jia’s film are about the changing face of China, and the human element that goes into it. He does not romanticize the Mao era (how could he?), but he is not sure that the current system is any better – that it leads the Chinese people to live happier lives. Watching this film, I was reminded of the excellent 2010 documentary, Last Train Home, which was about a working class Chinese couple, who have to travel far from home to make a living, essentially living their children to be raised by their grandparents. As China continues to become the most important economy in the world, Jia’s film continue to probe the cost of doing so. There is no joy in Still Life, just people balanced precariously between the new and old China, trying not to plummet to their deaths.

The Best Movies I've Never Seen Before: Platform (2000)

Platform (2000) ****
Directed by: Jia Zhangke.
Written by: Jia Zhangke
Starring: Tao Zhao (Ruijuan), Jing Dong Liang (Zhang Jun), Tian Yi Yang (Zhong Pin), Wang Hong-wei (Cui Minliang), Bo Wang (Yao Eryong).

Jia Zhangke’s Platform is one of the best films of the last decade that hardly anyone in North America has seen. While I have often read about Jia’s work in some film magazines, his films never seem to open in Toronto, and somehow I had gone through the decade without seeing any of his work. But when Cinemascope proclaimed Platform the best film of the decade, and it ranked 11th on Film Comment’s poll, I figured I should see the film for myself. Needless to say, I am now a fan of Jia’s work, and look forward to seeing his other films – Unknown Pleasures, The World, Still Life, 24 City and I Wish I Knew as soon as possible.

Platform is a decade spanning film that chronicles the social change in China from 1980 to 1990. When the decade starts, the country is still under Maoist rule, and as the decade ends, the country has opened itself up to Western influence. Daringly, Jia does not set his film among any protesters or politicians fighting for change – he doesn’t even set his film in a major city. Instead, he focusing on a small theater group, in a out of the way town, who travel to other out of the way towns to perform. The changes in the group are subtle at first – a slightly different wardrobe with more color, a group member getting a perm, but gradually they become more pronounced when they seep into their stage show – the collectivist propaganda is weeded out, and soon they are performing pop songs on stage – under the greatest band name in cinema history the “All Star Rock and Breakdance Electronic Band- and working for themselves.

Although the movie is filled with characters, it essentially ends up centering on four of them – Cui Minliang (Wang Hong-wei) and Zhang Jun (Jing Dong Liang) are the two male characters, sullen and withdrawn who are in very different relationships with Zhong Pin (Tian Yi Yang) and Ruijuan (Tao Zhao) respectively. Of these characters, Zhong Pin is the most daring of them all – smoking cigarettes, considered unladylike, and getting a perm before anyone else in the area. Her relationship with Cui Minliang perhaps goes too far, too fast, and it is not long before she is at the abortion clinic. The relationship between Zhang Jun and Ruijuan is more old fashioned by comparison – although it is quite clear that they are drawn to each other, and complement each other well, Ruijuan tells him that they cannot be together – her father does not approve of their relationship.

Jia’s film is remarkable in how it shows social change not in the big sweeping moments, but in the everyday moments of these people’s lives. Jia prefers long shots – often lasting minutes at a time – as he sits back and observes these people in their lives. The outdoor scenes he often shoots at a distance, as if eavesdropping on the characters in their moments. The indoor scenes often seem cramped an uncomfortable – there is not space for them to move around. Jia never really calls attention to the changes in the style, the music or anything else that signifies the changing social reality in China – but it is there is every scene. His sound design is interesting – often we hear things in the background – a march or a rally most of the time – that the characters are not participating in. Most filmmakers would concentrate on these events, but to Jia, they remain in the background. The social change in the movie is better signified by pop music than anything else.

The characters in Platform are struggling to find their identity in the new China. After years of living in a closed society, they have to deal with the fact that it has suddenly opened up. After years of self denial, they can now indulge in whatever they choose to. That is what makes the final shot in Platform the film’s best – one of the most haunting final shots in cinema history. In many movies, the final shot would be a happy one – one of domestic bliss and tranquility, of two characters who circled each other throughout the movie finally ending up together. Yet in Platform, it is a sad shot, and because Jia holds it for so long, and has the creepy music playing underneath, it adds to the shots mounting doom. Free for the first time ever, they still choose the path of least resistance, and lead the same lives they could lived under the old social order. The more things change, the more they stay the same.