Platform: I’d rather watch grass grow

As a general rule I deplore the vast majority of films made from 1970 up to 2000. Jia Zhangke made this film in 2000 set in 1979. Setting the film in 1979 he attempted to make the film feel like the time using filming technics of the time. In doing so he succeeded in taking all the worst qualities of a 1970s film and drags it on for 3+ hours. The plot, if there was one, was unimaginative and lacked the basic elements of a story. Perhaps the film is a good representation of what China was like after the Mao revolutions and before economic reforms, but its depiction of that reality does not add to and perhaps takes away from any entertainment value of the film.

The filmography was classic 1970-1980s style, in short: an overdose of anesthesia. The majority of the film was captured with a very-wide-shot or a full shot, this meant that the characters were further away and more difficult to distinguish. The people covered anywhere from a forth to an eighth of the frame, making the majority of the frame useless background which had little to do with the story. The background did however portray a since of mundaneness which seemed to be the theme of the film. There was a lot of wasted time in the film, both within scenes and whole scenes. A classic element of most 1970 films there was a lot of dead time, where little action, dialogue, or even anything was happening. The characters would have a few lines and then the camera would stay on them for a few minutes after the dialogue with nothing going on. We would stare at a gray brick wall for ten whole minuets waiting for something as interesting as an aunt crawling across the screen, only to be reworded for by a new shot of a gray wall. The camera almost never moved, the one time the camera was haphazardly placed inside the windshield of a dirty car for a moving shot of a motorcycle. I felt liberated as a Formula One driver, my euphoria was only short lived however as we soon returned to our usual seat strapped to a tripod.

The story was all but none existent. Most stories involve an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution or some similar combination. The film lacked many of the elements, most notably a climax and a resolution. This is most probably due to the fact there was no real conflict to resolve or climax. The basses for the film was a cultural dance troupe lost and trying to find their way after the end of the Mao era and the vacuum of ideals this left. However there is never any resolution, but perhaps this is because the film never fully defines any conflict to even be resolved. The theme of being lost is definitely there, but the film focuses on their lives trudging on, so the viewer never feels like they are fully lost. Which is probably what Jia Zhangke was trying to portray, people that weren’t fully lost, but neither fully found either. Near end there was a semi moment of progress and happiness when the ‘the communist party gave the town light, but even the villagers meet this event with halfhearted enthusiasm. Stuck in a void of ideals, direction, and economic growth these people lived a day-to-day existence of stagnation, portrayed by Jia Zhangke through a film of stagnation. In short, he did a good job of creating a stagnate film, like he wanted.