A World Away
by
Howard Schumann

Jia Zhangke's The World, his first state-supported film, continues his look at the disillusionment of Chinese youth with Western-style globalization, but shifts the setting from a rural to an urban environment. Young people work at Beijing's 114-acre "World Park," a sprawling Chinese Disneyland that displays scale models of famous landmarks such as The Eiffel Tower, The Pyramids of Egypt, The Leaning Tower of Pisa, The Taj Mahal, and The Vatican. For most of the low-paid employees, however, it is the closest they will ever come to seeing the world.

Jointly produced by the Shanghai Film Group Corporation and Hong Kong's Xinghui Production Company, The World, unlike Jia's previous independent work (Platform, Unknown Pleasures), has a big budget, glossy special effects, animation sequences, colorfully costumed song and dance routines, and uncharacteristic melodramatic plot contrivances. The film's main protagonists are young Chinese who have come to the city from rural areas to find work at the theme park, and who come in contact with migrants, petty criminals, and other lowlife characters who seem to thrive in this consumer-centered environment.

The plot concerns the turbulent love affair between a dancer named Tao (Zhao Tao) who performs in lavish shows at the park, and a security guard named Taisheng (Chen Taisheng) who has trouble remaining faithful to her. Zhao Tao, who has appeared in other Jia films, is sparkling in her role as the dancer whose horizons become more and more constricted. When she tells him, "You're my whole life," he replies, "You can't count on anyone these days. Don't think so much of me."

The employees live in overcrowded dorms or sleazy hotels. A group of Russian performers have their passports taken away when they arrive, and some are forced to become prostitutes. In a heartbreaking sequence, Tao's brother Erxiao is arrested by the police for petty theft, and his brother, a construction worker known as "little sister," experiences a distressing industrial accident. Jia presents the world in small episodes, in a similar way, he says to how "you use a computer -- you click here, you click there, each time leading you to another location." The vignettes, however, did not come together for me as a totally satisfying experience and the animation effects seemed showy. The World has stunning visuals and relevant social commentary, and I'm happy to see Jia achieve a wider audience by working through the system, but by the end of the picture, I felt that the sharp edge of his previous films had been lost.

Acutely observed and exquisitely realized, Hou Hsiao-hsien's sixteenth film, Café Lumiére, is a loving tribute to the great Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu on the centenary of his birth. It's the first film by Hou to be shot in a foreign location, and it pays homage to Ozu by depicting themes repeated in many of his films: relationships between aging parents, the marriage plans of a grown child, the coming and going on trains, and the quiet contemplation of everyday life. The style, however, is still unmistakably Hou, with its long takes, extended silences, and focus on mundane conversations. In one scene inside a tempura shop, the camera simply observes people coming and going for several minutes while we hear the sound of plates clattering, and food being fried.

Yo Hitoto plays Yoko, a young Japanese writer who is researching the life of a real Taiwanese musician Jiang Wen-ye, who was popular in Japan during the 1930s. Yoko was raised by her uncle in Yubari, but lives in Tokyo with her father and stepmother. She becomes friends with Hajime (Asano Tadanobu), the owner of a secondhand bookstore, and they meet often in her favorite coffee shop, making small talk and enjoying the passing scene. He is a train buff who spends his days riding the subway, recording the sound of trains, public address announcements, and the conversations of passengers. Though they are best friends and not lovers, he is startled to find out that she is pregnant by a Taiwanese whom she does not want to marry. Yoko's father (Nenji Kobayashi) and stepmother (Kimiko Yo) urge her to marry, though her father is uncommunicative in spite of his wife's best efforts to get him to open up. Oko's uncertainty about her parents' demands for marriage is reminiscent of Late Spring, An Autumn Afternoon, and other Ozu films on this subject.

The pace in Café Lumiére is deliberate, painstakingly detailed, and without much narrative thrust, but it may be the film that Ozu would have made if he lived in the modern age. Beautifully shot by Lee Ping-ping, the film allows us to view the world the characters inhabit, providing extraordinary details of Tokyo life, including outlying districts such as Jimbocho, known for its many bookstores, and Kishibojin with its look of old Tokyo. Millennium Mambo may be considered minor Hou and Café Lumiére transitional Hou but whatever category it is placed in, Hou's work, for me, is illuminating and unforgettable.

Julio Medem's Tierra (1996) is a tour de force about a man seeking a balance between his inner world and outer reality. It begins with a trip through space from the outer galaxies, and an eventual descent to Earth in an agricultural area. Beautifully photographed by Javier Aguirresarobe, the bare landscape with its orange and brown colors, gives the land a look of strangeness.

Angel (Carmelo Gomez) is a fumigator who visits a wine growing area in order to kill the woodlice that infest the soil. He has a running dialogue with his other self (his angel). Although he'd been treated in a mental hospital for multiple personality disorder, it is not clear whether he's a spirit guide, an alien visitor, or a paranoid schizophrenic. Angel claims that he has been sent down to Earth for a divine mission, and that he is half-man and half-angel, half-alive and half-dead. He hires local gypsies to help him fumigate the land, a project eagerly approved by the town, and they walk through the land covered in white protective suits that look like they were borrowed from the wardrobe of the movie E.T.

The half of Angel that is alive is torn between the sweet wholesome blond Angela (Emma Suarez) and the over-sexed eighteen-year old redhead Mari (Silke Hornillos Klein). Both are attached to a mean-spirited local farmer named Patricio (Karra Elejalde), one as his neglected wife, the other as his mistress. Angel claims that he is in love with Angela, but is slowly seduced by the playfully aggressive Mari.T he selection of a lover takes on a philosophical significance as it becomes a struggle for his soul, reflecting his own split personality, real or imagined. Along the way he has to deal with death by lightning, suicide, wild boar hunts, and a jealous husband.

Replete with awkward ruminations about duality, death, and the nature of life, the film unfortunately loses its narrative focus and becomes tedious and muddled. Without the metaphysics, Tierra could have been an intriguing look at the nature of human desire and the way we make choices about relationships. While the film contains fine performances and an intriguing sense of magic realism, I found it to be an ultimately unsatisfying experience.

Orthodox religion teaches that man has just one life in which to merit his eternal reward or damnation. Yet today approximately one in four Americans and many Eastern religions believe in reincarnation, the idea that repeated rebirth in human bodies continues until the soul has reached a state of perfection. In his 1995 film, Don't Die Without Telling Me Where You're Going, Argentine director Eliseo Subiela (Man Facing Southeast) uses the idea of reincarnation to tell a touching story about the enduring power of love. Adapted from a novel by Uruguayan writer Hermenegildo Sabat, the film is fantasy, but the emotions dealt with are very real.

Leopoldo (Dario Grandinetti), like his father, is a projectionist at the local cinema. His dream, however, is to become an inventor. With the help of his friend Oscar (Oscar Martinez), who has invented a robot in the image of famous tango singer Carlos Gardel, Leopoldo creates a machine that can record a person's dreams and play them back later on a videotape.

The film opens in New Jersey in the year 1885. Thomas Edison's assistant is saying good bye to his wife who has just passed away. We are then transported to modern day Buenos Aires where Leopoldo has recorded a dream in which he feels overwhelmed with love for a woman he does not know. He has been married to Susana (Monica Galin) for twenty years, but his love has become mechanical. Amazingly, the next day he sees the woman (Marianna Arias) in his dreams standing outside his theater. She explains that her name is Rachel and that she was married to Leopoldo, then named William, over one hundred years ago. She also tells the astonished projectionist that they have reincarnated together many times throughout the centuries in different roles. Like the angels in Wings of Desire, she is a spirit whom Leopoldo can see and talk with but cannot touch. He longs to hold and kiss her but the laws of the universe prevent this.

Fears begin to arise about his mental health when he is seen talking to himself as though someone were standing next to him. Leopoldo's love for Rachel only deepens, however, and both must struggle to overcome their deepest fears, Rachel to accept life, Leopoldo to accept death. Enhanced by the music of Franz Schubert and a lovely original score by Pedro Aznar, Don't Die Without Telling Me Where You're Going is a deeply felt meditation on love, death, and spirituality. In lesser hands, it could have become mawkish and unconvincing, yet Mr. Subiela is a true poet, and in spite of some initial resistance, I was moved by this sensitive work.

©2004 Howard Schumann
CineScene