petehumble There's a scene a bit over half way through that encapsulates the magic of this film and of Zhangke Jia in general. Having been humiliated in the nightclub at the hands of Qiao San, Qiao Ji, one of the two main protagonists, is seen returning to the nightclub with a gang in tow armed with sticks and clubs. His friend Bin Bin sees this and forcibly puts a stop to it. A fight occurs resulting Bin Bin getting a nasty slug to the head. Off screen a TV can be heard. A large group are standing around watching a live broadcast announcing the host city winner for the 2008 Olympics. The two boys are distracted by this and begin watching. Just before Beijing is announced as winner they glance at each other. As the crowd erupts in delight the two boys watch on with no reaction. This kind of transformation (in this case form the personal to the global) is continually taking place throughout the film. Just when most films would move on to the next scene something always happens to transform a scene giving the narrative a layer of complexity that most films don't get close to. I do understand why some people find this style of film making boring. The scenes are long, there's not capital 'D' drama going on but if you like films a bit closer to reality then there's a lot of pleasure to be had here.

Niv_Savariego "...as soon as the vocal signs strike your ear, they announce to you a being like yourself. They are, so to speak, the organs of the soul. If they also paint solitude for you, they tell you you are not alone there." (Rousseau)Zhang Ke's film is an incomplete song or a negotiation. Negotiation because he seems to ask us to imagine some possible future for his characters, some unknown pleasure potentially available to them. In return he'll provide us with a story. But for now, this film will have to be just some form of negotiation, not a complete story in itself. Unknown Pleasures is the name of Joy Division's first LP. In one memorable scene, Xiau Wu asks Bin Bin for pirated DVDs of 'Xiau Wu' and 'Platform' (Zhang Ke's previous films, starring Xiau Wu himself), and Bin Bin says he doesn't have them, Xiau Wu then asks for 'Love will tear us apart'. Well, we all know where this might lead to. (the band's name, by the way, chimes well with the way the official Chinese propaganda is depicted). Unknown pleasures is also a reference to Zhoangzhi, the ancient Daoist philosopher who dreamt he was a butterfly, and then could not figure out whether he was Zhoangzhi dreaming himself as a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming himself as Zhoangzhi. If only our characters could manage something like that! The closest they get to it is via a Dollar bill that comes inside a liquor bottle, American cinema (Pulp Fiction, appropriately) and a sweet pop song - 'Unknown Pleasures', once again, which Bin Bin will be forced to sing by the policeman at the end of the film. There are many 'unknown pleasures' on offer, but none of them is in fact 'unknown' or pleasurable: Falun Gong (perhaps even self immolation to achieve Nirvana), the 2008 Olympic games, etc. None provide a solution, just an escape. There is no 'opening' in Zhang Ke's world, not even the divide between art and real life will do, or help us forget this dreariness, this hopelessness. Good honest people become good honest criminals, just because there is no opening, no way to imagine otherwise, some unknown pleasure to make these humans complete, some way to make the fire on Xiao Ji's sleeves become real (tellingly, when he decides to rob a bank, he changes to a black shirt. The fire has burned out). In a way, Zhang Ke tells us, you cannot sing without your song turning into some kitschy propaganda, some form of coercion, but you also cannot not wish to sing. Not wanting to sing is a tragedy. And his heroes struggle hard and hopelessly in search of acquiring that wish.In a way, once again, Zhang Ke sings the song of the inability to sing (he appears briefly in the film, singing), of human beings who are unable to become ones, but are ones anyhow. He tells us his story bleakly, slowly, and in a very sensitive way. Following this movie he has turned towards a somewhat more benign and entertaining 'fantastic realism' style (in The World and Still Life, both are excellent). This is his second best after Xiau Wu.

George Parker The title of this film is a fitting description of its entertainment value. The story is a kind of lame social statement about creeping Westernism in China as viewed from the slums. However, the story is so trite, so cliche, so thin, and something we've already been through with Japan in a slew of films, it can't overcome the perfectly awful production value, poor quality of execution, and time wasting filler. The litnay of deficits is too long for this forum. But, for those who may want to give "Unknown Pleasures" a try on DVD, be advised that the DVD I watched had no CC and the default setting for subtitles was *** (three asterisks) and "off". English language subtitles did appear, however, after switching to "on" even through the *** generally means no subtitles available. FYI. (C-)

Howard Schumann Unknown Pleasures, directed by Jia Zhangke, powerfully brings home the spiritual malaise affecting Chinese youth as a result of global capitalism. Although the film is set in a small, impoverished Chinese city in remote Shanxi province close to the Mongolian border, there is almost nothing traditionally Chinese in this film other than the location. Two 19-year olds, Bin Bin (Zhao Wei Wei) and Xiao Ji (Wy Qiong) are heavily influenced by American culture and seem to exist only for their own immediate pleasure. They live on the margins in a city where, according to the director, two-thirds of the population were unemployed in 2001. They drink coke, chain smoke cigarettes, covet U.S. dollars, talk excitedly about Hollywood movies such as Pulp Fiction, and dance to Western-style music at the local club. In the words of Kent Jones (Film Comment Sept/Oct 2002), the protagonists are "media-addicted, resigned to momentous change, and powerless to understand or affect it". Bin Bin lives with his mother (Bai Ru), who works at a local textile factory and sympathizes with the Falun Gong (an extreme Buddhist religious sect that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist government). Apathetic and disengaged with no job and nothing to do, the two friends hang around the local community center playing pool and chatting with the regulars. After trying out for an acting job, Xiao Ji becomes attracted to Qiao Qiao (Zhao Tao) whose protective lover is gangster Quiao San. Xiao follows her around but seems unable or unwilling to make a move. When they finally go dancing, Xiao has to confront the threats of Quiao San's goons who finally catch up with him and slap him around. Bin Bin also has a girlfriend, Yuan Yuan (Zhou Qing Feng), but their romance seems to consist only in watching movies in a hotel room and singing popular songs (whose words suggest their own lives). Yuan Yuan has more purpose in life than Bin Bin and wants to study International Trade in Beijing. In a scene depicting Jia's wry humor, Xiao Ji puts Yuan's studies in perspective by saying, "WTO is nothing. Just a trick to make some cash" and Bin Bin declares to Yuan Yuan, " It is said that international trade is about buying rabbits to resell in the Ukraine." With little interest in common, they slowly drift apart. In a very telling scene, as Bin Bin sits in a booth in the inside of a train station staring blankly, Yuan Yuan rides her bicycle around and around, waiting for him to throw off his lethargy and join her. Though the boys hear about events in the outside world on television, for example, the winning of the Olympic Games by Beijing and the arrest of the leaders of the Falun Gong in Japan, they don't seem affected. Seemingly inured to unexplained violence, they are just mildly perplexed when a bomb explodes nearby with tragic results. Bin Bin asks whether the United States is attacking China.Shot in digital video that enhances its authenticity, Jia avoids pathos and sentimentality for a documentary-style realism that is deeply affecting. Although he focuses on the boys as victims of social and economic dislocation in China, the theme is more about feelings of abandonment, loneliness, and emotional numbness. Jia, one of the best of China's new generation underground "indie" directors, has captured this sense of ennui more palpably than any movie I've seen in a long, long time. When Xiao finally abandons his sputtering motor bike in the middle of a new superhighway, Jia seems to be suggesting that both he and China itself are at a precarious crossroads in their existence and must discard what isn't working if they are to move on.