Unknown Pleasures is arguably one of director Jia Zhangke's finest works, more raw yet subtle than his later, bigger titles. Shot on a simple hand-held system, the low-fidelity image hits us in the face with the dirty and dusty 'real' China, one in which the bare walls of prefab concrete slabs are covered in brown stains in a way that his more recent and better-funded work, A Touch of Sin (2013), can't.
As we can read in most other reviews of this film, alienation in the social and economical sense are a key feature in the protagonists' lives. Our two heroes, Xiao Ji and Bin Bin, try to navigate life on the bottom rungs of Chinese society along with the relationships with the women in their lives. They end up doing perhaps the worst heist attempt in the history of cinema. Not a story of the kinds we've never seen before, but where Jia Zhangke excels is telling this story, creating a setting that feels so real that the awkward lives of our heroes are understandable to us, the viewer from a different world.
He does that through superb camera and sound direction. The camera is static during most dialogs, confined to the narrow concrete-walled rooms of provincial China. It only moves and pans when it needs to, which is when the character in focus moves, and it only cuts when it needs to. It's very economical in the same way that the Chinese people in these kinds of cities live; having just enough money to live, saving most of their earnings like Bin Bin's mother or just getting by day by day like Bin Bin himself.
All the sounds and music in Unknown Pleasures come only from the world in which the scenes take place: the clapping and cheers from audiences, the crying sounds of cheap Chinese opera, background TV chatter, night crowds on the street, the horns and humming cars and other traffic, the advertising jingles and announcements. Where the camera work allows us to focus on the characters, the sound places the viewer inside China, whether it's Datong in 2002 or a third-tier city in 2015.
What Jia Zhangke showed me is a China as I remember living it: the same faces, the same clothes, the same environment and sounds. Just as him, I was always living it with a detached lens of an outsider, someone studying these people with a somewhat objective curiosity, with no understanding of their daily lives and feelings. Our ignorant heroes find themselves in circumstances beyond their control, brought upon by their ever-changing social and physical environment.
This is of course nothing new as we all know about the conditions of the poor in developing countries, but we need to see the human faces in order to make sense of it. Bin Bin and Xiao Ji may be young, desperate and stupid, and barely able to express themselves in words, but we can understand them. Bin Bin finds himself unable to join the army due to testing positive for hepatitis, a disease entirely preventable with vaccination but still very common in China. He takes to selling bootleg discs, while Qiao Qiao goes back to prostitution even after Xiao San is killed off screen. Being young, desperate and stupid, the two boys settle on a pathetic attempt to rob a bank with a fake bomb made out of cardboard.
Bin Bin finds out, after his arrest, that robbery carries the death penalty in China. In the films conclusion, a cop makes him sing "Unknown Pleasures" (Ren Xiao Yao), a pop song based on ancient Chinese philosophy by Zhuangzi, who is quoted by Qiao Qiao and interpreted (wrongly) to mean that they "are free to do anything they like". This misunderstanding is part of their experienced alienation from traditional Chinese culture as well as the contemporary culture which is no longer isolated from the rest of the world.
After all, American culture, or better to say pop culture, is omnipresent. These Chinese may live in a backwater town, but they are not wholly ignorant of the world at large. They value the position of their country in the world - outside of the club, the live broadcast of the announcement of Beijing as podium of the Olympic Games in 2008 results in loud celebration from the local men crowded around the one present TV set - and at a same time are aware of rising rivalry with the USA. This is a very crucial part of national identity and globalization: an understanding of where one stands in the 'global hierarchy' of nations.
At the same time, misconceptions exist too. Is a dollar bill really worth a thousand Yuans? Is it really as easy to pull off a robbery as in Pulp Fiction? The underlying question is the same: how different, or how much better, would their lives be if they were born in America?
Zhangke uses the television screen, specifically the news broadcasts, to relay this sense of Chinese identity in the world to the viewer. The news media give us an even more detached look at the world than the filmmaker's, yet is so important to how millions of people view their position in the world.
At his turn, with Unknown Pleasures the director gives us an insight into the alienated youth of a rapidly changing country, into the life of the near-bottom feeders of society, into their relationships and their sense (or lack) of identity, without the production and flash of his later films.
As we can read in most other reviews of this film, alienation in the social and economical sense are a key feature in the protagonists' lives. Our two heroes, Xiao Ji and Bin Bin, try to navigate life on the bottom rungs of Chinese society along with the relationships with the women in their lives. They end up doing perhaps the worst heist attempt in the history of cinema. Not a story of the kinds we've never seen before, but where Jia Zhangke excels is telling this story, creating a setting that feels so real that the awkward lives of our heroes are understandable to us, the viewer from a different world.
He does that through superb camera and sound direction. The camera is static during most dialogs, confined to the narrow concrete-walled rooms of provincial China. It only moves and pans when it needs to, which is when the character in focus moves, and it only cuts when it needs to. It's very economical in the same way that the Chinese people in these kinds of cities live; having just enough money to live, saving most of their earnings like Bin Bin's mother or just getting by day by day like Bin Bin himself.
All the sounds and music in Unknown Pleasures come only from the world in which the scenes take place: the clapping and cheers from audiences, the crying sounds of cheap Chinese opera, background TV chatter, night crowds on the street, the horns and humming cars and other traffic, the advertising jingles and announcements. Where the camera work allows us to focus on the characters, the sound places the viewer inside China, whether it's Datong in 2002 or a third-tier city in 2015.
What Jia Zhangke showed me is a China as I remember living it: the same faces, the same clothes, the same environment and sounds. Just as him, I was always living it with a detached lens of an outsider, someone studying these people with a somewhat objective curiosity, with no understanding of their daily lives and feelings. Our ignorant heroes find themselves in circumstances beyond their control, brought upon by their ever-changing social and physical environment.
This is of course nothing new as we all know about the conditions of the poor in developing countries, but we need to see the human faces in order to make sense of it. Bin Bin and Xiao Ji may be young, desperate and stupid, and barely able to express themselves in words, but we can understand them. Bin Bin finds himself unable to join the army due to testing positive for hepatitis, a disease entirely preventable with vaccination but still very common in China. He takes to selling bootleg discs, while Qiao Qiao goes back to prostitution even after Xiao San is killed off screen. Being young, desperate and stupid, the two boys settle on a pathetic attempt to rob a bank with a fake bomb made out of cardboard.
Bin Bin finds out, after his arrest, that robbery carries the death penalty in China. In the films conclusion, a cop makes him sing "Unknown Pleasures" (Ren Xiao Yao), a pop song based on ancient Chinese philosophy by Zhuangzi, who is quoted by Qiao Qiao and interpreted (wrongly) to mean that they "are free to do anything they like". This misunderstanding is part of their experienced alienation from traditional Chinese culture as well as the contemporary culture which is no longer isolated from the rest of the world.
After all, American culture, or better to say pop culture, is omnipresent. These Chinese may live in a backwater town, but they are not wholly ignorant of the world at large. They value the position of their country in the world - outside of the club, the live broadcast of the announcement of Beijing as podium of the Olympic Games in 2008 results in loud celebration from the local men crowded around the one present TV set - and at a same time are aware of rising rivalry with the USA. This is a very crucial part of national identity and globalization: an understanding of where one stands in the 'global hierarchy' of nations.
At the same time, misconceptions exist too. Is a dollar bill really worth a thousand Yuans? Is it really as easy to pull off a robbery as in Pulp Fiction? The underlying question is the same: how different, or how much better, would their lives be if they were born in America?
Zhangke uses the television screen, specifically the news broadcasts, to relay this sense of Chinese identity in the world to the viewer. The news media give us an even more detached look at the world than the filmmaker's, yet is so important to how millions of people view their position in the world.
At his turn, with Unknown Pleasures the director gives us an insight into the alienated youth of a rapidly changing country, into the life of the near-bottom feeders of society, into their relationships and their sense (or lack) of identity, without the production and flash of his later films.