Seeing the latest film from Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke in front of a
TIFF audience is always something of a treat. Although his acclaimed
films typically receive theatrical distribution in Canada, it's usually
of the art house variety that sees his work shine on 200 seat theatres
before making the silent segueway to DVD. The chance to see the final
Festival screening of his recent foray 24 City, an evocative blend of
fiction and documentary, in front of a full house of 600 at the AMC
multiplex was not to be missed.
Jia had already returned to China and was not in attendance. He has always struck me as a kind of Chinese Robert Altman, with
his low-key emphasis on capturing the often tragicomic fates of his
characters, who exist in milieus and atmosphere where the convenient
gloss of movie logic and the mundane minuetae of everyday reality seem
to intersect. Through interviews with factory workers and local
residents and staged, fictional monologues from three of China's most
famous actresses (Lv Liping, Zhao Tao and Joan Chen), 24 City examines
the legacy and impact of a massive aeronautical factory on the lives of
those who worked there and lived nearby. By extension, the film serves
as a kind of penetrating personal overview of China's shift from
Communism to capitalism, from an impoverished agricultural and
manufacturing economy to a hyper-thriving industrial giant. "If
you have something to do, you age more slowly," states one of the
film's subjects. An inter-title towards the end of the film describing
the setting, Chengdu, as "home of the lotus-eating life" also alludes
to the idea of a China that allows for relaxed prosperity through
dedicated labour in service of the motherland. But like Gary Burns and
Jim Brown's Radiant City, which screened at the Festival in 2005, 24
City uses fictionalized characters to probe the facade of contemporary
life and, furthermore, to hold a mirror up to an emerging superpower so
that it can come to terms with its past and its future.
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