P.L.A.T.F.O.R.M. Please Learn that Artistic Technique Fails to Overawe or Rouse Me

Platform, directed by Jia Zhangke, is a three-hour narrative chronicling the lives of several young adults as they grow and develop in the lifeless landscape of post-Mao China. The problem? After years of watching these “undisciplined” teenagers become men and women one looks back on the film and realizes nothing has happened. Who are the men and women that have been meandering across the screen for the past three hours? What have they accomplished? Who have they become? What is the point? Jia initiated Platform with a fresh perspective on life after Mao, but somewhere along the way he loses his audience to boredom and frustration.

It’s difficult to summarize the events in Platform because they are few and far between. Even the characters are hard to identify because dialogue is so sparse. It is a challenge to even ascertain their names. However, there are several points that are apparent. The singers and dancers begin their lives in enthusiastic innocence. Constantly berated for being “undisciplined,” the teenagers go about their lives with little investment in passion or even goals. They wander aimlessly gossiping and flirting and sporting Western fashions such as bellbottoms and permed hair. Time passes and these teenagers become adults, but the story is still the same. Somehow the narrative of their lives remains static though these characters pretend to be dynamic.

Alongside plot, characterization is desperately lacking in this film. All movie audiences (Western and Eastern alike) enter into an unwritten contract with the director in which the director promises to provide an emotional connection between the customers and the product. This is the reason why movies appeal to us, we learn to care about them somehow. If a movie fails to invoke some form of an emotional response then it has failed in its most basic goal. Films always carry a message, but this message cannot be delivered if the film does not meet minimum standards. Platform is one of those movies that had potential, but the characters remain flat pictures floating across the screen. They never reach out, they never struggle (meaningfully), they never become real people, and essential this is what movie characters need to do. If they never make the transition from character to human than it is virtually impossible for audiences to forge a connection, and thus care, about what is occurring on screen.

As we watch these figures drifting before our eyes, something stands out immediately. The setting seems to embody more emotion than the characters themselves. The powdery yet biting snow, the dehydrated deserts, the slain grass, the rugged and resilient gravel all conjures up more feeling than the faces and words of the people set upon them. Everything screams extinction and desolation. Mao ravaged the land with his relentless campaigns, fanatic modernization, ruthless Red Guard, and utter disregard for all live, whether it be human or plant or animal. We see plain as day that the environment has yet to recover from Maoism, just as the people are still dazed from its final blows. The emptiness of the rural villages mirrors the emptiness of the lives of the Chinese. They no longer are filled with red vitality, but have been drained and dried. I felt the setting was the most effected tool utilized by Jia in this film because it employed comprehensible and thought-provoking symbolism.

I would not recommend this film for anyone who is not an Asian Studies major, and even they should be wary. Perhaps there is much to be learned from a cultural point of view, but entertainment is certainly not a strong suit. Jia went over the top with excruciatingly long artistic scenes that weighed the movie down and brought eyelids down as well. It’s ironic that this film seems so heavy because it is simultaneously so empty. The over-emphasis on artistic technique unfortunately detracted from Jia’s legitimacy as a film-maker, but I don’t think all hope is lost. With a miracle-working editor there may still be hope for an abridged version of the abridged version.