Jia Zhang-Ke - Zhantai ('Platform') (2000)

The masterpiece of the New Chinese Cinema, Jia Zhang-ke's monumental Platform spans the turbulent 1980s by following four performers in the state-run Peasant Culture Group. Based in Fenyang, the director's hometown in the remote western province of Shanxi, these "art workers" praise the late Chairman Mao with approved revolutionary classics. When Deng Xiao-ping institutes an "open door" cultural policy and China begins to move toward Western-influenced consumer capitalism, the newly privatized group starts to sport spandex and play electric guitars. It's sex, cigarettes and rock-n-roll… until dreams are deferred. Platform, the precursor to Jia's Unknown Pleasures, offers vivid insight into modern China. Rich in detail and beautifully shot, Jia's epic yet intimate film exquisitely conveys a sense of time passing and ineluctable change. New Yorker Video




Set in Fenyang, Shanxi Province, the film focuses on a group of amateur theatre troupe performers whose fate mirrors that of the general population in China as massive socio-economic changes sweep across the mainland. The film commences in 1979 with the troupe performing numbers idolizing Mao Zedong, ending in the '80s when the shows reflect the strong Western influences pervading China, covering a decade in which China saw tremendous changes. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0258885/plotsummary)




This film is so full of atmosphere, and yes, emotion… but it is not shoved down your throat with typical Hollywood dramatic tricks… it is something you have to have the time and will to discover. That makes is so much closer and valuable. Film IS about seeing, and the fact that there are hardly any close-ups in this film gives our eyes the freedom to discover things in the frame. It is also a much more respectful way to film actors generally. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0258885/usercomments)




In many ways this is largely a wordless film, as the words are so meaningless, instead, eyes drift off into the distant landscape, and the sound of the film is filled with the noises of humans, street sounds, traffic, trucks, tractors, distant shouts or street chatter, radios, the noises of humans, this is really the theme of the film, the individuals are incidental, they come, they go, but the constant is the noise.




For many, Jia's directing style is distinctive because he tends to do low-budget movie and uses a lot of amateur actors. He is not likely other famous movie directors in China that focus more on movie's visual effect or box office, Jia's work always depicts life of ordinary Chinese people in a very (almost to the extent of extreme) realistic and candid manner.