The World

While fifth generation Chinese directors Zhang Yimou succumbed to crowd pleasing, turning out cheap, hollow, showy crap like Flying Dagger, sixth generation Jia Zhangke continues to remain faithful to making movies that reflect the sometimes painful metamorphosis the Chinese populace is going through at the crossroad of modernization. The World is such a recent attempt, although there are comments that this movie has already treaded across the line of commercialism.

"The World" here is a miniature world theme park which might be a novelty to Beijing but not the modernized parts of the world (there was one en route from Toronto to Niagara Falls over three decades ago, albeit at a smaller scale). The story evolves around dancer Xiao Tao (ZHAO Tao) and her boyfriend Tiasheng (CHEN Tiasheng). (While the actor conveniently adopted his real name for the character, Tao in the movie means "peach" while Tao in the actress means "waves", two entirely different words). Through the daily lives in the park (part of which is still under construction) and visits from various friends and relatives of the two main characters, we are exposed to how people interact, think, perceive, love, and more. Many of the sequences and dialogue are so realistic and real that you would wonder if these are simply people in the street asked by director Jia to stand in front of the camera (but some distance away) and converse the way they normally do.

The storytelling is straightforward and efficient, sometimes to the point of being skeletal. The camera is objective, impassionate and some may even call it dull. As if to make up for it, director Jia interspersed the script with animations, sometimes to mark off short episodes, each separately titled.

Not for the general audience, The World has an air of the rough-diamond kind of crudeness that makes it quite appealing to seekers of less main-stream cinemas. I do find it a little too long, even when I watched a two-hour version rather than the 140 minute version billed in the IMDb listing.

"See the world without leaving Beijing."

Maybe in America a theme park based on recreating various monuments from around the world would be seen as representing a mix of consumerism and cultural arrogance. In the real-life Beijing World Park that we see in this film, it seems to signal modernization, but at the same time, isolation from the world, and a certain falseness. That falseness can be seen in several other things - faking politeness in awkward social situations, the cheesy tourist photos in front of the model of the Leaning Tower, and believing in commitment and love with another person (the relationships in the film are all strained). Even the choreographed, glitzy dance routines might be seen in a different light. The characters are for the most part earnest and humble, but quietly give off a feeling of longing and desire for something more (maybe the desire to have the ability to break free and see the real world?), and I loved how director Jia Zhangke added the graphic art in fantasy sequences to help emphasize that. The visuals throughout the film are strong as well, but what I was impressed by most was the acting. So many of these scenes truly feel real. The one where the elders accept an insurance payout for their son's death is simply extraordinary, and immensely touching. Overall though, the film was a little slow and sedate for my taste (especially for its length), so it was a near miss for me, but fans of realism will probably like it more.

Jia Zhangke's The World, his first state supported film, continues his look at the disillusionment of Chinese youth with Western-style globalization but shifts the setting from a rural to an urban environment. Young people work at Beijing's 114-acre "World Park", a sprawling Chinese Disneyland that displays scale models of famous landmarks such as The Eiffel Tower, The Pyramids of Egypt, The Leaning Tower of Pisa, The Taj Mahal, and The Vatican. For most of the low-paid employees, however, it is the closest they will ever come to seeing the world. Jointly produced by the Shanghai Film Group Corporation and Hong Kong's Xinghui Production Company, The World, unlike his previous independent work (Unknown Pleasures, Platform), has a big budget, glossy special effects, animation sequences, colorfully costumed song and dance routines, and uncharacteristic melodramatic plot contrivances.

The film's main protagonists are young Chinese who have come to the city from rural areas to find work at the theme park and come in contact with migrants, petty criminals, and other lowlife characters who seem to thrive in this consumer-centered environment. The plot consists of the turbulent love affair between a dancer named Tao (Zhao Tao) who performs in lavish shows at the park and a security guard named Taisheng (Chen Taisheng) who has trouble remaining faithful to her. Zhao Tao, who has appeared in other Jia films, is sparkling in her role as the dancer whose horizons become more and more constricted. When she tells him, 'You're my whole life.' he replies, 'You can't count on anyone these days. Don't think so much of me.' As critic David Walsh points out, "all the young people have great trouble expressing their emotions to one another; they prefer cell-phones and text messages. The picture of a terribly repressed and repressive society, with vast problems and contradictions, begins to emerge".

The employees live in overcrowded dorms or sleazy hotels and a group of Russian performers have their passports taken away when they arrive and some are forced to become prostitutes. In a heartbreaking sequence, Tao's brother Erxiao is arrested by the police for petty theft, and his brother, a construction worker known as "little sister", experiences a distressing industrial accident. Jia presents the world in small episodes, similar he says to the "way you use a computer-you click here, you click there, each time leading you to another location." The vignettes, however, did not come together for me as a totally satisfying experience and the animation effects seemed showy. The World has stunning visuals and relevant social commentary and I'm happy to see Jia achieve a wider audience by working through the system, but by the end of The World, I felt that the sharp edge of his previous films had been lost.

A friend of mine says that his defining image of modern China is of a marble facade slapped onto a jerry-built wall; and it's this kind of picture that also emerges from 'The World', a touching movie about the lives of a group of workers in a Beijing theme park in which all the planet's tourist attractions are copied in a single location. Beautifully acted, the film provides an interesting insight into the patterns of behaviour of young Chinese; but the underlying tone is melancholic, and this flavour grows stronger as the story progresses; in some ways, it's a tale about the death of hope. But it's done with a light touch, some striking photography and some nicely realised animated interludes. I found it moving and subtle, and ultimately, very sad.

While this film is radically different from Jia's earlier films it still packs the same cultural criticism wallop. A commentary on the urbanization of modern day China, Jia has moved into the slick world of government approved film-making without losing touch with the direction of his earlier films. It is tempting to watch the film superficially and dismiss it as a glossy state approved image. However, from my perspective, what is happening in the film is much more subtle; it is form of art-making that is particular to China and its authoritarian governing systems through history.

Practically speaking China has never enjoyed freedom of expression for its artists and writers. In order to get around censorship that came from absolute monarchies or dictatorships artists and writers would use subtle inter-textual messages. For instance, a line or radical would be left out a character to slightly change the meaning within the text. The head radical might be left out of a character describing the emperor to indicate the writers desire that the emperor be beheaded, or something along those lines. They were small enough messages that sympathizers would pick up on them, but a censor (censors usually not being the brightest or most creative people around) would miss it.

It is my opinion that Jia Zhangke is doing something along these lines with this film. It may not be as subtle as the messages have historically been, but a close reading clearly conveys something the government wouldn't be happy with. The Chinese government would like for the world to see them as metropolitan, glitzy, shiny, and new, so Jia, in this first film of his with government backing, uses cinema-scope, modern techno beats, computer animation and up-to-date electronics. But under the glitz is the reality screaming to get through the World Park facade. It is dirty and personal. There is prostitution, crime, and pirate copiers (maybe the theme here is modern Chinese society, as promoted by the government and big business, that is the pirated copy of the rest of the world). The subsistence living youth can all have cell phones, but for all their text messaging they don't seem to be able to communicate. Basically Jia seems to say that the Chinese youth are headed for a future of oblivion under the current direction of their country. It is hard to disagree with him. But at least he he leaves a morsel of hope in the end of it all.