It's hard to get into Jia Zhangke's Unknown Pleasures at first, with its ugly digital video and listless characters, but what feels at first like raw documentary footage soon becomes a more cinematic experience. Certainly, cinephiles have a false sense of China. We're more likely to have seen its action spectaculars, lavish historical dramas, and/or product from Hong Kong. But what's mainland China really like? Unknown Pleasures dares show it. it's poor, it's depressed, its adults have given up, and its youth, raised on a mix of Chinese and Western influences, oscillates between bleak nihilism and YOLO. The key image for me is that of Xiao Ji, one of the three young people we follow, sitting on a stalling motorcycle. These characters have the will to do something, but no means to do so. And so in this squalor we don't only come to understand 2002's China, but a more universal feeling, that of living in a world that doesn't have anything to offer us except quick, destructive pleasures. Some have called this film aimless; I don't agree. It has direction, but like its pause-filled, awkward dialog, the world keeps stalling its characters in place.
Tells the story of young adults facing the "no future" reality of provincial China in the early 2000's.
Not unforgettable, except maybe for the courageous ambition of giving a negative image of life in China.
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MMDan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFm4S2BhTrAJettrink4
Nice Pulp Fiction reference!Siskoid
It's hard to get into Jia Zhangke's Unknown Pleasures at first, with its ugly digital video and listless characters, but what feels at first like raw documentary footage soon becomes a more cinematic experience. Certainly, cinephiles have a false sense of China. We're more likely to have seen its action spectaculars, lavish historical dramas, and/or product from Hong Kong. But what's mainland China really like? Unknown Pleasures dares show it. it's poor, it's depressed, its adults have given up, and its youth, raised on a mix of Chinese and Western influences, oscillates between bleak nihilism and YOLO. The key image for me is that of Xiao Ji, one of the three young people we follow, sitting on a stalling motorcycle. These characters have the will to do something, but no means to do so. And so in this squalor we don't only come to understand 2002's China, but a more universal feeling, that of living in a world that doesn't have anything to offer us except quick, destructive pleasures. Some have called this film aimless; I don't agree. It has direction, but like its pause-filled, awkward dialog, the world keeps stalling its characters in place.rexroom
This movie gave me lung cancer.Windill
Tells the story of young adults facing the "no future" reality of provincial China in the early 2000's.Not unforgettable, except maybe for the courageous ambition of giving a negative image of life in China.