CantileverCaribou

This might be a decent example of why many filmgoers are resistant to foreign, world, or art cinema. The World seems to have something to say, wrapped in a veneer of profundity, but it feels so vapid and trite. Is this shallowness part of the critique, part of the point? The American Psycho novel, somewhat replicated by the film adaptation as well, featured a shallow and consumption-obsessed psychopath who waxed on and on about the most inane pop music and other disposable aspects of culture; even if it was a bit tiresome to wade through, it played into a feedback loop that solidified certain conceptual pretensions from the author; I don't count myself a fan particularly, but I can see one arguing successfully that what I didn't like about the book was one of its strengths. Perhaps that's the same for Zhangke's The World? I don't know, but I'll get into why I don't care, and most viewers probably wouldn't either.

To begin with, the core premise and setting are interesting. China has made a grand amusement park with downscaled versions of famous monuments from around the world, including London's Big Ben, America's NY city scape before the twin towers fell, Italy's Leaning Tower of Pisa, India's Taj Mahal, France's Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, among others. It would appear that the vast array of characters who work at the park would be used to explore Chinese identity or what have you in relation to not just a rapidly modernizing China, but the world, as symbolized by the park that promises you to see the entire world without leaving the comfort of Beijing.

But... what are we left with other than typically sad sack and alienated art film characters wandering a landscape that is well-shot, but often gray, bleak, and dreary? You'd think there was nothing to making an art film other than having your characters mope a little with a blank expression, hiring a top-notch cinematographer, long stretches of silence and slowness, and stringing a script together that's not much more than "something something modernization + I'm really awkward and have a hard time communicating with others."

The plotting is pretty much a random assemblage of scenes, though there is some progression that prevents it from being a mere series of vignettes. The animated interludes look striking in their own way and are well done (the flying woman looks kind of bad, though), but don't seem to add much otherwise and seem out of place. The story centers around a couple named Tao and Taisheng, a couple... in love? They are confused about what they want in their pursuit of love and the relationship seems ephemeral as a result. Like most people in the movie, they don't communicate so well.

Most of the other characters are less important and aren't given much screen time in comparison. There's an unrequited love between two others that ends with coercion, a very hollow and fake friendship between a Russian woman and Tao, and a man who promptly passes away in a workplace accident, probably for the sole reason of reflecting on the rampant amount of similar incidents and the seeming disposability of workers in China.

The World is long, moves at a snail's pace, and the emptiness left me feeling empty. Good job. The ending is... interesting, I guess. Not sure what to make of it, though it is quite surreal and almost out of place for what is often a quite realistic film, sans the animations, which, on second thought, are perhaps meant as preparation for the unexpected ending.

As the university system becomes more of a diploma mill, with more people pumped out with no skills... well, I guess this is what you get. A 20-something woman roaming around from job to lousy job, from one banal conversation to the next, to all the parties in the neighborhood.

That's this movie. A scene of vignettes, each one as awkward and stilted as the last. The conversations are as spontaneous as the main character is described to be by one of her friends--and he is right, she is spontaneous and her life is without direction, but it's clear that she's looking for direction; thematically, this is as deep as you'll get. She wants a good job and a boyfriend, and she spends the entire film looking for both. This is a "mumblecore" film and that "genre name" is a good indication of what you'll get. Hipsterish types stumbling around and talking about nothing, replete with a lot of pauses, "ums," "ahs," and a whole lot of the word "like." Some might find the synopsis of the film to be relatable because it's "realistic," or "they've had similar episodes in their life," but that doesn't really equal good filmmaking.

You can tell that the philosophy at play here was to get a bunch of weirdos to act together, throw together some scenes, and see what sticks. Problem is that none of it really sticks. As has been said elsewhere, there really isn't a character arc or any real development and it is very much a slice of life film, but none of the slices are appetizing. Perhaps the back and forth phone call with Marnie, Alex, and Alex's sister was alright.

While I haven't looked for the script, I'm sure it was quite scant, if it existed at all. The acting is amateurish, and a lot of the dialogue appears to be improvised, with the exception of maybe a few key lines. The actors don't pull it off well and it feels too random; the director never shaped the improv into anything that would be serviceable for the film. He just got his 90 minutes and called it a wrap. The ending was especially random and thrown together. It just ends, seemingly mid-scene, while Marnie and Alex are talking. It doesn't end on anything poignant; the ending could have just as easily been placed in the middle of the film or elsewhere.

The technical aspects are no better. The art direction is a messy jumble of items that makes most sets look like... an uncleaned room. The camerawork is poorly framed and lacks any dynamism (other than the documentary-styled camera shake for 90 minutes), the lighting is flat, etc. I've been told that the average viewer can more easily tolerate poor camera work compared to poor audio quality, but the audio is possibly even worse. The sound quality is muddy and there's always a loud layer of background noise or static accompanying the dialogue. Luckily, the character audio is pretty loud in the mix and you can hear most of what is said, but some parts are difficult to understand. There is no discernible attempt at sound design or usage of music (not even for the closing credits).

Personally, I can see why some people are drawn to a film like this. They get tired of the meticulous artificiality of conventional filmmaking or they want to be freed for a while from a convoluted plot (one they've often experienced numerous times); I'll admit that Funny Ha Ha has a sort of smooth flow that can be nice at the right times, but I'd sooner recommend other "mumblecore." Perhaps Four Eyed Monsters, The Color Wheel, and Frownland, all of which are better made and have a bit more going on conceptually.

It's actually questionable if this should really be placed in the horror genre, though it is tagged as such on IMDB; regardless, it's a puzzling film with a darker than black atmosphere, which is unsettling due to its morbid themes and lack of almost any exposition or dialogue. I'm not sure if any synopsis will do the film justice or would be a good intro to help one understand exactly what is going on in this film. The sole other review on IMDB nails all of the key points; this is a poetic Russian art film along the lines of Tarkovsky or Sokurov, but filled with an occult despair.

Given that a character announced dead appears to mysteriously come back from the dead, I can't help but liken this to a zombie film, like Night of the Living Dead or some such, only if they made it as a poetic art film in the Russian tradition and obscured the fact that it was a genre film at all, took out any explanation of what characters are doing and their relationship to each other, filmed mostly in long shots, underacting or almost listless performances rather than overacting, etc. Whether this is horror or not, it's so strange, mysterious, and atmospheric that it's far more horrific than outdated genre works like NotLD or even most horror films; it's worth a look for the open-minded fan of horror or for lovers of Russian art cinema.

The murderous happenings in the beginning that are perpetrated by the child and the grandfather are never explained. About all we know is that the main character heads to a small village where his cousin lives, presumably to write a story about a mouse or shrew. A radio message seems to have symbolic implications as it talks about using a poison to kill moles disturbing farms. It's not clear if it's actually the outsiders of the village that are being discussed, the strange men who roam around with their peculiar ritual of wrapping people in cloths, or simply just moles (sometimes a mole is just a mole). There is one segment of surprising dialogue that clarifies a few points near the end--intimating that the rituals performed by the men are a means of "understanding the unknown," (unfortunately, the translation I had was a bit poor, though I doubt it would have made a difference) but it's all very vague.

It ends on a disturbing and very memorable note, though, of course, failing to provide any kind of closure or convenient explanation for the events of the film. I'd like to eventually read into the intentions of the creators or interpretations of film theorists, but I suspect the film was, is, and will always be, an enigma. Though the film is quite slow and overly obscure, the black and white cinematography and unexplained logic of the events carries the atmosphere wonderfully, and if their intent was to make a startling and ineffable work of cinema, then the filmmakers have succeeded.