Platform begins and ends in a small village in rural China, most likely a western province due to the lack of colors. There is a group of friends/couples/morons that are part of a song-and-dance troupe used as a mouthpiece for the Maoist government. After a long time of nothing happening, they leave the city to go out into the world and do, surprise, nothing. After more nothing happens they return to their hometown to do, again, nothing. During this time they are surrounded by a colorless and uninspiring landscape which only adds to the sense of a complete lack of substance in this movie (if one goes so far as to classify it under this term).
There is a complete and utter difference between a silent film and a film about nothing. This concept, however, is clearly one that Jia Zhangke never bothered to learn. The American films of the early 1900’s were silent yet packed with action and meaning. Platform, on the other hand, was not a silent movie yet contained little to no meaning. This reversal leads to a three-hour-long movie that is about nothing and has no significant meaning or impact. If a movie is so completely devoid of these necessary features, as Platform is, it might as well be thrown in the garbage can and set alight in an all-consuming conflagration. Jia’s detachment from the viewers of his movie is painfully evident in the fact that few people can even remember the names of his “characters,” if one can stretch what they do to the role of a character which is meant to portray something significant to the viewers.
This detachment is, unfortunately, a hallmark of the “artistic” set of films that attempt to convey some social or political meaning rather than earn billions of dollars. While there are many of these films that adequately portray their intended ideological significance, the majority are mere ignominious, shoddy collections of film thrown together in a barely logical order. These movies almost never gain the respect of the public yet frequently are heaped with praise from the artistic community. This dichotomy between popular and artistic culture reveals the elitist nature of Western artistic culture which is often composed of fellow artists and academics. To these individuals, “artistic” is defined as something that is different or abrasive to the popular norm, which translates to the common individual as a blatant attempt at high-browing the artistic community into something above public appreciation. A perfect example of this is the movie Avatar, which became the highest-selling movie of all time in a matter of months yet received almost no awards from the “artistic” community. In fact, Avatar and Platform represent the perfect contrast between popular and “artistic” culture that acts as empirical evidence for my argument: Avatar received few awards while Platform got almost every one possible (surprisingly, ‘The Most Boring Movie of the Year’ or ‘Biggest Waste of Film Space’ awards were not among of them).
Kent Jones of the Film Society of Lincoln Center has said that the ending scene of Platform is ‘one of the finest moments in modern movies,’ a comment he most assuredly wished to retract as soon as he came down from his hallucinogen-induced high. This scene, which was supposedly to serve as the climax, is nothing of the sort. The word ‘climax’ invokes a sense of action that occurs as a result of a buildup of tension. Climaxes usually involve deaths, explosions, or fairy tale-like perfect endings. They do not, however, consist of a man sleeping and a woman rocking a baby. Furthermore, the buildup or tension or suspense that ends in a dramatic and final manner is totally absent due to the lack of anything to build upon. Yes, the ending was most likely intentionally set in this manner as to emphasize that the entire film itself is about nothing, yet this still prevents the audience from enjoying any facet of the movie. Jones was clearly on a psychotropic drug of some sort in order to feel this scene had any particular meaning, for what begins in nothing can only end in nothing; matter can neither be created nor destroyed.
虽然这个电影真没有意思，但是我懂为什么江老师要我们看。如果中国人觉得很有意思的话，我们就得看看。然而，我还挺不喜欢站台。对不起！
-安均奕 / Jayson Eckert
No comments:
Post a Comment