Jonathan Rosenbaum on a devastating attack on China's embrace of the leisure eco nomy : The World Jia Zhangke; Japan/China/France 2004: Zeitgeist Films/ Region 1; 139 minutes: Aspect Ratio 2.35:1: Features: production notes by Jia Zhangke. character sketches, onset photo gallery, original theatrical trailer Chinese director Jia Zhangke's remarkable fourth feature, The World, lamentably failed to find a distributor for theatrical or DVD release in the United Kingdom. Paradoxically, in China it is the first of |ia's films that the government has passed for screening (the oth ers circulated only on pirated videos when first released), and that despite it's being in some ways even more critical of contemporary life in mainland China than its prede cessors. Like certain other films of veiled protest made under authoritarian regimes, such as Henri Georges Clouzot's If Corbeau (France, 1943) and Juan Antonio Bardem's CaIIeMayor (Spain, 1956), it transfers most of its implied social critique to male female relations. As I suggest in the film's brief Canadian trailer (which Zeitgeist has somewhat mislead ingly labelled an interview on this DVD), The Worldis also in part a metaphorical film that, wittingly or not, actually lives up to its title. The film is like a global newspaper re porting on the current state of the planet, and conveys an exceptionally grim view of capitalism as seen from the alienated perspective of a director who can still recall a more collectivist mode of existence. It's only in the strained final scene that the meta phorical aspect of the movie becomes derailed by an abrupt departure from a naturalist ic style, and the story turns confusingly abstract and metaphysical. The grim depiction of capitalism's encroachment into China is a theme shared with Jia's masterpiece. Platform (2000), which chronicled the changes seen in China during the 'Open Door' 19805 through the eyes of a group of friends in a performance troupe, and is his only other film to share The World's epic dimensions. But The World is also Jia's first sustained foray beyond his native Shanxi province (the area in northern China where his previous films, Xiao Wu, 1997, Unknown Pleasures, 2002, and Platform, were set) and onto the more treacherous international canvas of Beijing, where the director himself moved to when he was 23.
More specifically, the film's title refers to a theme park outside Beijing featuring miniatur ised replicas of famous sights such as the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the leaning tower of Pisa and even a Lower Manhattan with the World Trade Center still intact. Almost all the major characters work in the park, including the two leads, a couple from the Shanxi town Fenyang. The woman is a dancer (Jia's customary leading lady, Zhao Tao), the man a security guard (Cheng Tai Shen). She migrated to the city first, and her more glamorous job is symptomatic of a subtle, growing class rift between them. This rift is signalled further by her discomfort with the seediness of his hotel room, and eventually goads him into betraying her with an older woman who suggestively makes clothes that are precise imitations of brand name garments found in a fashion catalogue. Given the grandiose dance numbers performed in the park, all supposedly representat ive of different nationalities, The World can be regarded in some ways as a backstage musical, one complete with cramped dressing room scenes (ironically, the film's only marriage is between two dancers who are shown constantly bickering in this drab, bunker like space). But the most brutal contrast between the park's fantasy and working reality occurs in a devastating sequence set beyond the park's perimeter, and chronicles two 'pay offs' that accompany the death of a construction worker after an industrial acci dent: first, the company the man works for dutifully doles out compensation for his acci dent; then, on his deathbed, the victim lists all his debts that must he paid off. The comic incongruities of the park and its visitors are suggestive of Jacques Tali's Playtime, another great film that requires a large screen for its full vision to take hold. Both films employ tricks with perspective and miniaturised simulacra (though Tali's are produced on a gigantic set) to project powerful yet deceptive visions of internationalism and modernism, and both are social critiques about what it means to impose monu mental facades on tourists and workers who continue to think small. Yet the sharp differ ences in era, tone and ideas about shared public space are even more pertinent. One key difference between these films and their respective worlds and eras is the pres ence and uses of mobile phones and text messages in The World. Mobile phones in The World provide a single, Utopian form of escape, brilliantly expressed by the film's abrupt shifts into animation when the characters send one another text messages; they also express, if only temporarily, a kind of shared private space that otherwise eludes the film's characters, who seem unable to communicate with people in immediate phys ical proximity to them in any meaningful way. Indeed, almost the only other sustained in
timacy that we see is the friendship between the heroine and a fellow dancer from Rus sia. These women don't speak a word of one another's language, though they share tears of mutual recognition once they discover at a party that they're both being goaded into a life of prostitution. Like certain other films of veiled protest made under authoritarian regimes, The World' transfers most of its critique to malefemale relations