Distant Voices, Still Lives

Globalization and modernity in Jia Zhangke’s The World (世界)

David Liu | 22 November 2011

The deepest problems of modern life flow from the attempt of the individual to maintain the independence and individuality of his existence against the sovereign powers of society, against the weight of the historical heritage and the external culture and technique of life.

— Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903)

In light of China’s fragmented progression through periods of reform and renovation, the idea of “modern life” shares intricate connections with urban progress and the struggle to separate culture from consumerism. A similar fine line distinguishes the so-called Fifth Generation of filmmakers from the enfants terrible of the Sixth Generation, two cinematic movements symbolically connected by the events in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989.

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Unknown Pleasures

David Liu | 10 August 2010

Opening my browser this morning for a customary perusal of current events, I was thrilled to discover that Jia Zhangke was recently awarded the Leopard of Honor at Switzerland’s Locarno International Film Festival. At 40, Jia becomes one of the youngest lifetime achievement award recipients in the history of the festival circuit.

Jia hails from a dusty provincial town in Shanxi province, a region traditionally looked down upon within China for the conservatism of its denizens and the squalor of its living conditions, the aftermath of decades of coal mining and heavy industry. As a Shanxi native myself, I’ve always felt a special sense of kinship towards Jia for his portraits of people and places so dear to me.

But there is more yet. As I write this, images, voices and expressions resurface in my mind, and I am once again inspired, humbled. The static long takes, the eclectic local dialects, the Bressonian depictions of life in a mercurial world; the rough-hewn beauty of Xiao Wu, the fractured scope of Platform, the melancholy sagacity of Still Life; the ennui of small-town life, the emptiness of metropolitan existence, the undying past, the uncertain future.

And once more the truth emerges, transcending the screen. As Jia demonstrates over and over through the clarity of his vision, there is nowhere we can go to escape ourselves.

GREAT SCENES
Platform / 站台 (Jia Zhangke, 2000)

As a familiar oldie plays on the radio, Ruijuan (Zhao Tao) dances to the rapture of lost memories. Moments later, the film cuts to a long shot of her riding through dusty Fenyang, and Su Rui’s melancholy “Shi Fou” merges with the clatter of small-town traffic.

Distant Voices, Still Lives: The Decade in Jia Zhangke

 David Liu | 22 November 2009

jiazhangke

No less renowned a publication than New York City’s Village Voice has called Jia Zhangke “the world’s greatest filmmaker under 40.” With only six full-length features to his name and relatively little support from government officials, Jia nevertheless built a formidable reputation for himself in the international film community beginning in the late 1990s, establishing himself as one of East Asia’s most important contemporary auteurs and a leading figure among the so-called Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers.

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