Platform (2001)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Best movie ever!

As Good As It Gets

Admirable film.

It is kind of sad to read these sad comments about being "bored" with this wonderful film, or "not understanding the characters".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, I believe a much more respectful way to film actors generally.This is a great film, I hope we see many more from this young director!

"Zhantai" has so many of the features I have admired from recent Oriental masterworks such as " A Brighter Summer Day", "Eureka" and "City of Sadness" that I will have to find some justification for considering it ultimately so much less satisfying. Like these others it succeeds in creating a complete world of its own that, because it is so remote from Western experience, exerts a fascination that is hard to forget. We are in Fenyang a small town somewhere West of Beijing, where flat plains give way to craggy, uninviting mountains. The time is the early 1980s when strict Maoist ideology was about to give way to a period of consumer liberalisation. A group of young actor-singer- dancers employed by the state to remind provincial audiences of the principles of Mao through the medium of stage entertainment are about to see their world fall victim to the progress of private enterprise, when no longer needed for government propaganda. What was once a captive audience turns fickle, often rejecting outright the new form of pop culture they are offered. The irony is that progress in this context brings disillusionment resulting in a group of friends drifting away from their close initial camaraderie. By the time the film ends their future looks far from confident. Both thematically and atmospherically "Zhantai" has the potential for great cinema. Why then after two viewings in quick succession do I find its sense of communication so elusive and uninvolving? The answer must lie in the way the director seems to distant his characters from their audience. We never get closer to them than a middle shot. In a film where the close-up is as rigorously excluded from cinematic grammar as camera movement from the later work of Ozu, the characters' everyday lives seem to be presentad as an extension of their existance on stage to the extent that we are often left to guess at their feelings and emotions. I have written before of how fascinated I am to respond to the demands of directors such as Edward Yang and Hou Xiaoxian to connect with characters and situations when given the barest information. Director Jia Zhangke is obviously aiming at their oblique narrative style but somehow gives so little that by the end I felt I knew much more about the topography of Fenyang than of the characters that live there. For a film about the effect of historical change on individuals to be completely successful it needs to be the other way round.

It is hard to express in words the sheer joy i take whenever i view this Contemporary masterpiece!! Truly a pleasure to behold and the most special cinematic journey I've had in years!!

80's is a unforgotten age of chinese,compare with "xiao wu"(director's last movie),i prefer Zhantai.It is all about 80's,its music,its live,and of courses,the people who live in that age.those 10 years,is a period of great change happened in China.With reform&open,many things changed,the life changed eventually,and something we lost also.Being a chinese,i am lucky for living through that decent.and had seen the great improvement in China,but at the same time,we lost sth.that worth to miss. And i doubt why it is a french movie,though i know it is the fund from france.but it is totally chinese,totally made by chinese,and all about our history and our individual in the age. All above,it is excellent.