Photo: Zhao Tao as Tao in Jia Zhang-ke's The World
Both in 2000's Platform and 2002's Unknown Pleasures, Jia Zhang-ke's characters look to break free of insular communities. Certainly there's no more haunting image from Unknown Pleasures than the sight of a young man's motorcycle breaking down just outside the border of the film's ghost town, where people trade in pop cultural parts from the outside world. In The World, the village is now global but it's still insular. The film's World Park is a Sino Disney that brings the world to people who can't (or won't) see it on their own, embodying the angst and confusion of a generation of Chinese youth. It's there that both tourists and workers alike trade in facsimiles of foreign goods: from the simulations of world wonders to the designer clothes one female character replicates outside of work. Ed Gonzalez
Both in 2000's Platform and 2002's Unknown Pleasures, Jia Zhang-ke's characters look to break free of insular communities. Certainly there's no more haunting image from Unknown Pleasures than the sight of a young man's motorcycle breaking down just outside the border of the film's ghost town, where people trade in pop cultural parts from the outside world. In The World, the village is now global but it's still insular. The film's World Park is a Sino Disney that brings the world to people who can't (or won't) see it on their own, embodying the angst and confusion of a generation of Chinese youth. It's there that both tourists and workers alike trade in facsimiles of foreign goods: from the simulations of world wonders to the designer clothes one female character replicates outside of work. Ed Gonzalez
