The results of the 63rd Venice Film Festival could prove unexpected only for those who are not familiar with the modern cinematographic environment. Rewarded with the Golden Lion for his film Still Life, the Chinese director Jia Zhangke has already gained approval in the West where none of his five films remained disregarded (Rojas, Cheng-yin 163). Listening to Zhangke, It is impossible not to pay attention to his allusions to the entire tradition of auteur cinema to many famous directors of the past. At the same time, Zhangke introduces his peculiar style of narration, which is regarded by many as the ability to combine a sweet fiction with a bitter truth. Therefore, it is crucial to analyze the works of this director and dwell on his director techniques.
Formally, Jia Zhangke belongs to the so-call sixth generation of Chinese directors. The sixth generation is commonly characterized as realists involved with sharp social problematic. In general, these are very distinct figures, and their association in a unified movement appears mainly the tribute to the established systematization of Chinese cinematograph into generations. However, it can by no means by stated that the works of Zia Zhangke are forbidden in China, the director rather did not ask any permission to screen his films. His first feature film was called the Pickpocket: the identification with a small thief was somewhat a self-reflection introduced by Zhangke that appeared in the film (Gajjala 195-196). Platform and Unknown Pleasures were self-made films that were never put on distribution in China, and were available only on DVD (Berry, 2009). Starting from the movie the World, Zhangke starts screening his films officially and he does not have any issues of censure despite the fact that the majority of his films did not lost their social problematic. At the same time, the films of Zhangke cannot be reduced to social critique only.
Stylistically, the cinematograph of Zia Zhangke is the absolute opposition to the splendor and decoration of the high style embedded by such directors as Zhang Yimou, and who is regarded as Zhangke's main opponent. Nonetheless, Zia has its own monumentality and theatricality. The events of Platform, for instance, take place in Fenyang, the director's native city (Berry, 2009). The first part of the film depicts the place surrounded by a fortified wall, house are located within it, with heroes wandering the perimeter of these barriers. Indeed, this is no simple space, but rather a strictly organized one. Within it, in the emphasized materially-minded reality of Zhangke, there exists something that be called scene. With that, it is not just the scene that hosts the participants and performers, and not the total spectacle of the totalitarian foundation found in Zhangke's films. The very everyday life is composed into a spectacle that required a lot of attention to be seen. The director's camera fixes the fortified walls and the niches as the decorations a little longer than it is expected, as if waiting for something to happen. Heroes naturally fit the shot and leave it with the same natural character, but their actions leave a feeling of a strictly counted gestures and poses. The explanations of the characters during their conversations are persistently shot with the static camera, without mounting.
Furthermore, another peculiar feature of Zhangke's dichotomy is the insularity and openness. Hence, his China is a secluded and abandoned space. The characters of Platform timidly localize themselves within geography. The political liberalization is manifested mainly in the moment when the space of fortress cities becomes open. The camera looks away from the fortified wall, moves aside opening a suddenly spacious panorama of the city. The atmosphere then introduces the feeling of physical relief, the freedom of breath.
A journey, even a smallest one, with which Zhangke so often connects his feeling of emancipation and ecstasy, very soon stumbles the inert reality. On their way back from the tour, heroes faces the break of their truck. Meanwhile, the sound of a train can be heard. The entire group appears to be in the state of euphoria, with everyone screaming and gesturing, and rushes to the train on railroad tracks. Apparently, this is the notorious train to Shaohan observed in the first scene of the film and which was so archly accused of its excess slowness by one of the participants. The symbolic train of history either hopelessly lags behind or already moves far away, and the heroes did not even notice the moment when they were able to catch it.
In the final analysis, the temporality of Zhangke's films fits well the concepts about the entire temporality of the genres used by the directors. As opposed to the landscape eternity, the moments depicted by Zhangke seem to establish his unique style of narration, putting the acute social problems onward. In his films, people survive cataclysms on an equality with other things like packs of cigarettes, liquor, tea, and sweets. At the same time, the films of Zhangke develop the themes of the alienated Chinese youth and the modern history of China. Very often they are filled with the critique regarding the very idea of China's globalization, and often appear diversified. The works of the director demonstrate his vision of the authenticity of the Chinese life, the successive return to origins and the retreat from the harmful landmarks. One the whole, the cinematography of Zhangke are most closely related to the idealization of Chinese society.
Works Cited
Berry, Michael. Xiao Wu, Platform, Unknown Pleasures: Jia Zhangke's 'Hometown Trilogy' London: BFI, 2009. Print.
Gajjala, Radhika. Global Media, Culture, and Identity: Theory, Cases, and Approaches. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2012. 195-196. Print.
Rojas, Carlos, and Eileen Cheng-yin. Chow. The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013. 163. Print.
