platform review

film by Jia Zhangke (2000)

Following the everyday lives of a group of young theater performers from rural Fenyang, spanning the late 70s to the early 90s in the aftermath of China’s Cultural Revolution, the film explores the country’s rebuilding and transition.

Review by Aaron Jones | August 29, 2024

As China changes, the influences of the Western world slowly creep in, creating an inevitable chasm between generations and conflicting ideologies. The film juxtaposes collectivism against independence, traditionalism against modernism, and communism against capitalism throughout the landscape of the characters’ lives.

The film subtly portrays this small provincial theater troupe emerging from their arrested development. Disillusioned and alienated, they find themselves without purpose, caught between two divergent, colliding worlds as they discover their own ambitions and process their differentiation from one another. As the demands of adulthood and conformity become insurmountable, the troupe slowly dissolves, and its seduction dilutes, much like the time it represents. Even though some vestige of China’s former self still rears its head, their coming of age will not yield to growing up amidst drastic changes in social developments. They feel left behind and eager for an escape, represented by trains and cargo boats leaving for unknown destinations while they remain trapped within the confines of their isolated location, as the world passes them by, unaware of their stagnation.

With its dreary, overcast, desolate interiors and natural soundscapes, part of the film’s exposition is communicated through a deliberately oppressive manner embedded in its foundation. The bleak, gray-shrouded skies and constant soundscapes of industry, urban discord, political assemblies, loudspeakers, construction, blaring radios, traffic, and dilapidated infrastructure add their own muted layer to every scene. Jia Zhangke makes use of all the tools in the medium to transcend an invasive environment that offers no relief from its despondent reminders.

Platform carries a deliberately fractured use of time coupled with an intensely reserved and subdued portrayal of standard living conditions under China’s Communist regime. It avoids embellishments and more closely resembles a fly-on-the-wall observation of moment-to-moment conversations, placing us in new scenarios connected through subtle mentions or gestures that signify the passing of time. Time inevitably wears them down, systematically shrinking the chasm and blurring the lines that had previously conveyed the dichotomy between the young and older generations, as the film sometimes disheartenedly displays.

While serving as a history lesson on China towards the end of the 20th century, Platform feels like a personal and impassioned arthouse film about the mores of adolescence under political strife. Due to its subdued style and density, it may take a few viewings to fully appreciate, but it is an extraordinary film.

Author

Reviewed and published by Aaron Jones. Based in California, he developed a passion for film from a young age and has since viewed over 10,000 films. Curently serves as a film critic at CinemaWaves, he has contributed to other publications as well. Feel free to follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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