Zhantai

It took me almost three hours, finally I finished another film by Jia Zhang Ke's called "Platform." Now I have seen all three of his so called "hometown trilogy": "Xiao Wu," "Platform," and "Unknown Pleasures."

"Platform" tells stories of a group of young people in a small town in Shanxi Province in the 80s. China was emerging from the damage due to the 10 years long Cultural Revolution, and these young people rode the waves of the changes in the Chinese society searching for their positions in the new social structure.

Like Jia's other films, this film does a good job on capturing the details of the lives of the ordinary people, especially those on the very bottom of the society. But it's like a broken container trying to hold its ingredient together. You see those cooking materials are scattered around all over the place but they are never put together to make a delicious dish. It doesn't have a focus.

I am not sure if the film maker did it intentionally or because he was using those "non-professional" actors, the camera always stays far away from its object and it almost never gets a close up on these characters. It makes me a bystander to watch what happens to these characters standing in distance. It's very frustrating not to be able to get closer and get connected to those characters.

By the way, I have no idea why the director Jia Zhang Ke is so obsessed with this guy Wang Hong Wei. Wang is the lead actor in every one of Jia's film. I start to think that Wang is the mafia boss and has total control of Jia. Otherwise, how can I explain this phenomenon after I see most of Jia's films? This is an interesting film to check out, especially if you have the patience and time, but not a great film.

It's an epical, relaxed, meandering, beautiful, rich, etc. laconic time portrayal of China's cultural history in the 80s, based on the fate of a theatre company. The protagonists are mostly "twen slackers" who wait for the artistic breakthrough, and director Jia follows their lives in mostly aloof, breathing tableaux. What in today's cinema Hou Hsiao-hsien achieves for space and Béla Tarr for time, is combined in here, without directly referring to both of them. Here, horrible tragedies (a divorce lacking any emotions) take place as well as not less horrible comedies (the mine workers contract: "Death and accident are acts of destiny. The firm will not take any responsibility."), but everything seems to be straightly taken from real life. The title 'Platform' alone already indicates the oddly depressing tone of the film. The desperate waiting, eternally postponed by short changes of perspective as a fundamental experience of a whole era. "We're standing on the platform and we're still waiting, waiting." Although, the film is set in the 80s, 'Platform' also brilliantly and perfectly captures the mood at the end of the 20th century: a rampant epos of never realised chances and daily travail. The film of the new millennium.

Platform ("Stage" might be a better translation)shows us the lives of a troupe of actors as China went from Maoism to markets, from 1980 to the 1990s. The treatment is sardonic and distant; we rarely see anyone in a closeup, and the point of view is as critical of liberalization (embodied in bad rock and go-go dancing) as it is of the cult of Mao (performed in the hilarious socialist-patriotic opera at the beginning of the movie). As Fassbinder said of the movies of Douglas Sirk, material objects--a brick wall, a pile of boards, a marketful of cheap clothing, bowls of noodles, embroidered slipcovers, copies of bellbottom pants, a truck, etc.--are at the center of the mise en scene, appropriately so, since the story is indeed about material changes. In fact the movie bears a lot of resemblance to Fassbinder's Marriage of Maria Braun, as both trace growing prosperity, consumerism, and personal alienation through a sequence of rooms, houses, relationships, and home furnishings. Provincial China moves from dirt, scarcity, and collectivism to a modest supply of consumer goods and more individual freedom/insecurity. This historical movement is intertwined with the characters' aging from their teens to middle age. There is no appreciable increase in human joy and happiness, nor a marked decrease either. This cold, distant treatment will not please some viewers.

I definitely liked this film much better than Jia's Unknown Pleasures, his follow-up, but I still wouldn't call it great. Platform is a very amorphous film. Perhaps it has more meaning to those who might know the referents better than I, the various places in China which are visited. But the fact remains that the loose, repetitive, episodic structure mixed with the total lack of character development hinder much of the possible enjoyment or involvement. I know it's not cool for a certain sector of Chinese art films to allow the audience to give a crap what's going on. But, surprisingly, I did enjoy it to a fair extent. You kind of feel like you're part of the performance troupe in the film, that you're being carted between these sections of nowhere around the vast country. There are many beautiful scenes. It's worthwhile. I suggest, given its 2.5 hour running length, to watch it in bits and pieces. It won't feel quite as repetitive.

It is kind of sad to read these sad comments about being "bored" with this wonderful film, or "not understanding the characters".

This film is so full of atmosphere, and yes, emotion... but it is not shoved down your throat with typical Hollywood dramatic tricks... it is something you have to have the time and will to discover. That makes is so much closer and valuable.

Film IS about seeing, and the fact that there are hardly any close-ups in this film gives our eyes the freedom to discover things in the frame. It is also, I believe a much more respectful way to film actors generally.

This is a great film, I hope we see many more from this young director!