Platform

Platform only seems endless. Directed by Jia Zhangke, the film follows a theater troupe in post-Mao China through several uneventful years and across a monochromatic landscape that becomes symbolic of the characters’ colorless lives. The film is likely to leave you to wonder why you’ve invested three hours in watching. Even the most sympathetic viewers, those aware of Jia’s lofty reputation, will wait eagerly and then expectantly and, after a while, nervously for something, anything, to excite and interest them.

They’ll wait for significance, for meaning, for clarity, for action. The wait is long, and it’s frustrating. But that, of course, is the point.Platform is all about waiting, futile waiting, the sort of waiting that, Jai seems to say, leaves the youth of China frustrated as well.

The characters invite more sympathy than empathy. Half the time, you cannot even tell who is who because the characters all merge into a waiting collective. Individuality is lost in this world, and names are insignificant.

As teenagers, at the beginning of the film, they’re happy and enthusiastic, determined to make it in life. Most of all, they have expectations, as all young people do. But these teenagers are undisciplined and uneducated, and they soon encounter hardships and difficulties. Their expectations are frustrated, and their happiness and enthusiasm soon yield to the reality of pointless waiting. And so as adults, they have almost nothing. They’re still waiting, perhaps, but only out of habit, for they’ve come to realize that their waiting has no purpose and will never be satisfied.

Slowly, the troupe breaks apart. Otherwise, little happens. The characters lose interest in their own lives, or at least in their futures, just as viewers are likely to lose interest.

Throughout the film, as the characters remain distant and the plot pointless, the camera work contributes to the remoteness of it all. The film seems to employ a cheap camera placed on a tripod as far away from the actors as possible. Viewers are likely to feel like Peeping Toms, creeping into a corner for an odd perspective or looking through a window. Often, viewers can see only the backs of the actors, who are barely audible.

And if their conversations are muffled, that’s only because waiting depends in part on limited awareness. Not knowing what the characters are saying or doing, you’re more likely to suspect they’re saying or doing something important. And so you’re more likely to wait, just as they’re waiting out of ignorance.

The landscape is as desolate and bland as the characters’ personalities. There is almost no color, except for whites, grays, and browns, just like a carnivore’s dinner. At some points, you may even think you are watching an old black-and-white film of the 1940s. This lack of visual stimulation is overwhelming, almost nauseating. The lack of color and stimuli contributes to the film’s length seeming unbearable. But, of course, that’s the point: The barren landscape and the absence of any kind of stimuli complement the frustration of waiting and the pointlessness of the plot.

Does this film deserve a recommendation? Characters aren’t inviting; action is limited. And so this isn’t an entertaining film. Far from it. But it’s enlightening. This film is unlike all the other fifth generation Chinese movies: It’s boring. But in that, it’s profound. And if you fall asleep during these three hours, doesn’t that explain much about China, where life isn’t only hard but where, worst of all, it can be as boring and pointless as waiting on a platform for a train that never arrives.