Unknown Pleasures (2002) User Reviews

Malaise and despair amidst the changes of China.

[Robert_Woodward · 6/10 · 16 May 2008]

Unknown Pleasures portrays Bin Bin and Xiao Ji, two young Chinese men living in the city of Datong, several hundred miles west of Beijing. Theirs is a city in transition; crowded streets and apartment blocks back onto building sites, weird landscapes of debris and raw materials. The growing commercialisation of Chinese society is readily apparent; in an early scene the duo attend a lurid road show promotion for alcoholic drinks. The television news that punctuates the film shows the changes and conflicts in China and the effect these are having across the world, from the controversial US spy plane crash to the award of the Olympic games for 2008.

The two young protagonists are outsiders in their changing city. Bin Bin, newly unemployed, lives with his mother. Unwilling – then unable – to find new employment, he becomes increasingly despondent. His relationship with his girlfriend, Yuan Yuan, is lived out in front of a television screen: they rarely make eye contact. The cultural void in his life feels remarkably Western. Xiao Ji works for his father's garage business. Whilst Bin Bin becomes increasingly downcast, Xiao Ji dreamily pursues Xiao Wu, a dancer with the aforementioned road show, risking the anger of her volatile boyfriend.

The overlapping stories of the two friends develop a common theme of loneliness and yearning on the fringes of a rapidly changing society. The sense of despair and malaise in their lives is powerfully conveyed, but the increasing aimlessness of their activities makes for slow and often difficult viewing. The final third of the film is particularly slow, with many drawn-out scenes. Despite this slackening of the pace, an unexpected twist at the end rams home the film's message that, along with the new freedoms in China, there is disenchantment with the new shape of society.

Gritty but boring

[alexduffy2000 · 6/10 · 19 June 2003]

I saw this film at the IFP LA Film Festival on June 16, 2003. It started out pretty well, but became aimless and sort of meandered. I couldn't root for any of the characters. The background of economically depressed mainland China is interesting, but only for a while. After half an hour, I wanted characters I cared about, but this movie didn't have any. It's not that the young actors weren't talented, it's just that the script was anti-climatic and didn't leave me wanting more, I just wanted the movie to end.

A reflection of an era and a generation of youth

[eugehet · 7/10 · 21 June 2023]

If you are looking for a plot or a strong narrative in this story, you will be disappointed. This film is an observation of a time in china where the economy is bad and how the youth in that time period is affected. Sometimes it feels like there is a plot but really there is no plot because nothing much is happening or going to happen. It reflects alot about the main characters in the movie, like they have a direction but in reality they don't know what they want and what they are doing. You know they are looking for some kind of freedom or pleasures to make them feel alive but then in the end they are desensitised.

There are no character arc in all the actors. They are a reflection of emptiness and loss in the society as the country is undergoing a lot of changes as shown through the TV shows and news broadcast. All the main characters have low self esteem and going through identity crisis. Torn between influences from the west, modernisation while still trying to grasp their conservatism. A small challenge of Xiao Ji kept trying to ride up the small hill with his motorbike shows that he needed some small goals in life to give him confidence.

The director connected very well the physicality of the space and characters showing the hopelessness in them, though not in the most exciting way.

I feel the film is very home-made, shot with camcorder or DV camera. I will very much prefer better lighting, colours and even sound. Many a times the audio from the TV overlaps with the actors's dialogue and I cannot catch the context of the dialogue. Overall I felt Director Jia Zhang Ke had captured very well the feelings of the youths during that time, the many silence, the many unspoken inner conflicts and frictions they are facing in their world. It is not entertaining but a very well informed film.

Powerful and affecting

[howard.schumann · 18 October 2002]

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.

A dark film of disaffected youth

[gbill-74877 · 7/10 · 30 October 2019]

There isn't an ounce of joy or spark in these characters, who I'm pretty sure don't crack a single smile throughout the film. They manage to smoke a million cigarettes though. Not that there's anything to smile about, and that's the point. There is no beauty anywhere, nor is there hope. The landscape is a wasteland, the buildings are ugly or in ruins, and jobs are few. One says there is no future, and the other says that 30 years is plenty for a lifetime. Even when they're alone with women, they look forlornly off to the side or curl up in the fetal position.

This is a heavy neorealist type of film, reflecting poor parts of China that were still attempting to modernize in this time period. Who knows, as China's economic strength has continued to rise, maybe this film is already looked upon as quaint, or will be soon. American cultural references (e.g. Pulp Fiction) are known by the characters in the film, but it's from a distance, and things like the modern dance moves that have been picked up seem pretty tepid. Meanwhile, a single American dollar is viewed as quite a find, and a can of Coke is a treat. It certainly reminded me of the blessings in my life.

The scene that was most powerful for me was when the young woman who sings and dances (Zhao Tao) is trying to leave her boyfriend's company. Again and again she gets up and tries to exit, and again and again he pushes her back into her seat, and it seems such a perfect metaphor for the cycle of abuse in these kinds of relationships. Later we see he's also given her a black eye.

Given the dreary view the film shows of China, and the nihilistic attitude it takes towards the future, it was a little surprising to me that it wasn't censored more by the government. We see the power of the State on small television sets cracking down on the Falun Gong, what seems like a forced confession, and in real life when a policeman tells one of the guys that the punishment for robbing a bank is death. There is a lottery in place that may be a way of instilling a larger hope in people's minds than the infinitesimal chance of winning would justify, perhaps not unlike American lotteries. There is also a new highway project being built and great fanfare when Beijing is announced as the home of the 2008 Olympics. I guess all of these things can be viewed as in keeping with the government's interests, but in light of all the shabby surroundings and the dismal future these two guys have, they seem pretty sorrowful.

The film is meaningful and I admire director Jia Zhangke for having worked in an underground, indie type manner to produce a view of honesty and truth. I didn't rate the film higher because it's so depressing that I wouldn't want to look for it again anytime soon.

Bleak view of a changing China

[evening1 · 6/10 · 26 October 2019]

In the rundown city of Datong (population 3.3 million), we get to know a handful of depressed teenagers and their equally unhappy parents.

The males in this film tend to smoke, drink, and spend a lot of time loafing and milling around. It's the women who do the work, but get disrespected and have a hard time getting paid.

Everywhere, there's a boxy TV -- blaring inane cartoons or news of the latest crime -- be it sabotage at the textile mill, which killed 46, or the confession of a gun-and-ammo-toting ne'er-do-well.

In this third feature film of Jia JiangKe, of the "Sixth generation" of Chinese filmmakers, who made their movies without government support, we encounter a China where traditional customs are giving way to highly questionable values of the West.

Gou Bin Bin (Wei Wei Zhao) is 19 and old enough to be pulling his weight, but he quit his job at a produce store after a fight with his boss -- "I didn't like his face." He lives off his mother (Ru Bai) , a Falun Gong adherent, but scorns her ("Don't mind her -- she's old"). His best friend, Xiao Ji (Qiong Wu), is also jobless. Like a puppy, he follows Qiao Qiao (Tao Zhao), an alternately haughty and anhedonic dancer who lapses into prostitution ("I'm too expensive for you -- go away!"). As if blind to his own flaws, Xiao Ji tells his father he should be ashamed of himself (for trying to cash a US dollar at the wrong bank), and warns him he'll hear about it at home.

We see many dates during which Bin Bin and his girlfriend -- who listens to her parents and nixes premarital sex -- sit stiffly in a cramped, rented room, as the TV blares. Their lack of symbiosis parallels the rift in China's personality, as old-school values clash with bourgeois influences from America.

Bin Bin's mother is fed up with him -- what mom in any country wouldn't be?

"No work today?" she asks.

"You haven't left yet?" he mutters.

"Join the army and go far away!"

"Always down on me -- you'll see!"

The military rejects Bin. (Whether his hepatitis diagnosis is real, or just the establishment's payback for his mother's religious leanings, is unclear.) "What's so great about a long life?" Xiao Ji asks. "Thirty years is enough."

With their horizons limited, they come up with an ill-conceived escape plan, straight from the US silver screen.

This movie ends with a song, but on a very unsettling note.

Good film for industrializing China

[ulyssestone · 9/10 · 4 January 2005]

Since I have seen the other two films by Jia, I was more or less prepared for his way of narrative. But there were still many things attracted me. The industrializing city itself, with all the dirty scars on its face, established a sorrowful mood for the whole film. The most promising character (Bin Bin's girlfriend) was always sitting like a puppet, dreaming of a world that she did not exactly know. The young people's mind were fulfilled with information from pop music and American movies, the Chinese tradition was totally cut off, I could even hardly find any morality in them, a nowhere generation. When one of the most interesting scene (Bin Bin's girlfriend riding bike in that hall, waiting for him for a while and finally departed from him slowly) ended, it seems that it's all over, but then came an absurd bank robbing that made the helplessness of their lives more obvious, when Xiao Ji tried to restart his motorcycle repeatedly, it seem his only hope, but he failed, and jumped into a bus which took him away alone the new highway that leads to the unknown big city. I hope next film of Jia would focus on big cities, because I think the problems showed in Jia's past works are not just caused by poorness. It is lucky that at this transforming time of China we have an artist like Jia to speak in his own voice when everyone else seems happy with those "great" changes.

Indie Filmmaking with a Social Conscience

[kmethi · 9/10 · 8 November 2002]

Unknown Pleasures is the first Jia Zhang Ke film that I have seen and it is excellent. The setting is a town in the north of China, but it could be anywhere in the developing world - India, Argentina or South Africa, for example - where neo liberal economic policies have benefitted the urban elite, but created dislocation for millions of others. The director undoubtedly has a deep social conscience.

The film focuses on several young people, members of China's "new new" generation. As the films progresses, we see what the new world order offers them - US currency, American pop culture, the 2008 Olympics, new super highways - contrasted with the reality - few opportunities for young people, laid off state factory workers and a general degradation of moral values. The message is clear: the new world order offers common people everything in return for giving up traditional ways of life, but actually delivers little of substance. As Bin Bin puts it when he finds out that his girlfriend is going to Beijing to study international trade: "WTO is nothing. Just a trick to make some cash."

The social realist style - it has a bit of a documentary look to it - and the pop song which the film is named after and which features prominently in it (Ren Xiao Yao - the lyrics speak about youth alienation, particularly a desire for freedom and pleasure) also provide a cutting edge look and feel. The song is emotive and will strike a chord with those who like explorations of youth alienation.

However, the film, as befits the political and artistic climate in China, is very subtle and understated, and may escape those who have little knowledge of current affairs in China or an insensitivity to the economic and social dislocation that is taking place outside the big cities (this is not a good date movie for the corporate Western expat and his urban Chinese girlfriend who measure progress by the number of new condos and Western restaurants in Shanghai).

This is great indie filmmaking, though, and I would particularly recommend it to socially and politically aware twenty and thirtysomethings who like artistic expression that is intelligent, socially conscientious and cutting edge.

Indifference

[boblipton · 4/10 · 25 October 2019]

It's a movie of unconnected young adults, slogging through a modern China which has no place for them and pays no attention to them. They live amidst ugliness and poverty with no sense of beauty or hope. They watch television with blank, what's-this-got-to-do-with-me expressions as identical images appear repeatedly, speaking of different events, and talking about the anger of the people. What people? Not these people! Or the show will be of a man confessing to having a gun, shortly to be shot, and then a character in the movie will lay plans to get guns; another will deny he can be punished with death for robbing a bank, because it was not a successful attempt, so the interrogating officer will demand he sing a song.

I'd feel sorry for them, except for their inert indifference. There's no one to root for in this movie, nothing to captivate the eye. There's a certain amount of authorial heckling, a sense that nothing will change until some one cares. But since no one gives any indication of caring, there's nothing in this movie for me.

Artistic, Compelling, & Existential

[jmverville · 10/10 · 1 September 2004]

The story begins with an outline of the mundaneness of the lives and future of two Chinese youths, and progresses into showing in a short amount of time just how much their lives and personal situations change; dealing with unemployment, troublesome love lives and coming into their own a beautiful story unfolds.

With allusions to the film Pulp Fiction throughout and a recurring song that touches the heart, with solid performances by all of the actors (especially Zhao Tao) it was a very good film. My only criticism is at times the story can be slow, though overall the story is far more interesting than one sees in normal cinema.

The film was particularly strong in the simplistic nature of the film-making itself, with nothing ever over-the-top. It aimed to tell the situation as how it really is, and to tell life like how it really is, not some sort of Hollywoodized conception of life. The artistic reflection that was put into the film shows a great and amazing depth to it that is often hard to find.

Overall, a great film my Jia Zhang-ke. The feelings of hopelessness that he is able to make oneself feel make this a must-see for anyone who enjoys sad cinema and existentialism, and is interested in the struggles of youth and issues of modernization and globalization.

slow, dull and boring

[bosscain · 1/10 · 1 February 2005]

When I saw this video in the library the cover was glowing with comments like "Top ten films of the year", "A combination of Godard and Tarantino", "Stunning","Haunting" it put me in the mind-frame that this was going to be a good movie, But in actuality, the comments on the cover could not be further from the truth. I found this movie to me painfully slow, tormentingly dull, and excruciatingly boring, watching paint dry or watching grass grow would be the equivalent.Why it received such high scoring reviews is beyond me.I got an idea, lets make a movie about some dirty,unemployed, one step away from being homeless teenager and film him standing on a street corner smoking, then lets film the same teen eating a bowl of rice and arguing with his mom, then lets film him in a pool hall just sitting on a bench talking to his friend. WOW! that would make a great movie. Maybe in China but not here in the US. 1/10

Unforgettable and gut-wrenching, extraordinarily real: Jia's finest work so far

[Chris Knipp · 10/10 · 26 February 2006]

Jia Zhang-ke's movie is powerful and sad. It concerns what you might call two young semi-urban hicks with no future, both rail-thin, constantly smoking, one Bin Bin (Zhao Wei Wei), tall and sad-faced, the other, Xiao Ji (Wu Qiong), a smaller guy with a stylish haircut that covers a lot of his face. The former has a girlfriend, but he and she agree to separate while she goes through exams. Then she reproaches him for not asking how she did, but he protests that he's out of the loop so didn't know when she was done. His mother, a Falun Gong sympathizer, says he's useless and he offers to enter the army. But when he has a blood test, it shows he has hepatitis and he's ineligible for military service. The orderly warns him about contact with a girl because it's very contagious. It seems like his life is over.

Neither guy has a job and they have no money. Xiao Ji, the smaller, more rakish one, who is all bravado and no follow-through, practically stalks a girl named Qiao Qiao (Zhao Tao) who's an entertainer for a drink company and who has a petty gangster for a boyfriend. This older punk eventually has Xiao roughed up at a disco for dancing with his girlfriend, and turns out to carry a gun. The girl at first rejects the boy, but then they go together and even sleep together.

After he learns he has hepatitis Bin Bin borrows money from a shyster and gives his girlfriend an expensive present in a very sad scene where he won't touch her and she leaves him sitting by himself inertly in a typically desolate train station.

Both the pals have dead-end lives. Sometimes the Chinese landscape, a vast rural-turning-into-urban wasteland under construction, reminds one of Italian neo-realism and the poverty of postwar European cities and one may be reminded of Pasolini's 1961 first film about young toughs with nothing to do, Accattone, but these Chinese boys are more passive and inarticulate and lack the Italians' false bravado.

Bin Bin starts selling discs to make back the money he owes but that looks hopeless and Xiao Ji's motorbike is starting to break down. Finally they decide to rob a bank. Naturally such a demanding project undertaken by two individuals of such low energy and flair is a complete flop, and the tall boy is arrested while the punk-haired one flees on the bike, but he has to leave it by the side of a desolate highway and hitch a ride in a van.

Bin Bin, in jail, is forced to sing a song and he sings a hopeful song about working class people he sang with his girlfriend in front of the TV at a happier moment. The film ends here, with the voice-over of the boy and girlfriend singing over the final credits.

The ironically named "Unknown Pleasures" is an infinitely sad, unpredictable, seemingly aimless, but ultimately very meaningful and awesome movie that is at once primitive, real, and deeply touching. This is a great movie. It takes you somewhere you've never been before, somewhere painful and unforgettable. You can say this is a "depiction of the spiritual malaise afflicting Chinese youth as a result of global capitalism" as Howard Schumann has done, but that is to articulate the thing in a way that the participants in the story could not do. Rather, it is a couple of aimless lives awash in a changing modern China pretty near to the bottom of the social scale; but it is also a picture of lack of chutzpah, helplessness, failure to thrive. TV's, always on in some room, show events in and out of China, new construction, criminal prosecutions, a downed US plane, Beijing chosen for the Olympics, and there is talk of dollars and video games and even Pulp Fiction's opening scene, but all this is little more than a noisy distraction for the aimless boys. The young people in Hou Hsiao Hsien's 2001 Millennium Mambo are rather different. They are all good looking hustlers, and they may go nowhere either but they're going to make some kind of splash and spend some money along the way. But while Hou's film seems on the outside looking in cluelessly, Jia enters to the core of his characters' grim shallow lives and etches them on our hearts forever. Jia creeps up on you slowly and then never lets you go. This is the most powerful film I've seen in a long while. Its contents seem trashy and junky, but turn out to be astonishingly vivid and rich visually and aurally, a mix, also, that you've never quite seen before and aren't going to forget even if you want to.

Perhaps Jia is the most talented of the "edgy underground film movement" that is the "Sixth Generation" of Chinese filmmakers, but not all his work is the same. "Platform "has more sweep and is more personal; "The World" is more up-to-date and relevant; but this is the one that grabbed me and showed me Jia's raw greatness as a filmmaker. It has more drive and more emotional power than anything else he has done so far.

Subtly brilliant

[rich65536 · 3 June 2004]

Unknown Pleasures is a fantastic film, but not one I would recommend to my friends. When you're used to seeing Hollywood film-making, it's difficult to watch a Chinese movie that makes other indy films look glitzy.

This is not a film that reaches out and grabs you. The camera keeps an unemotional distance from the characters at first, and only through the use of repetition and extended, unedited shots, does the filmmaker draw the viewer's attention to the subtle details which make this film so powerful.

The main characters dream in a world of American pop-culture and pro-Chinese propaganda, but the camera captures their bleak existence with devastating realism. Through his rejection of western cinematic techniques, the director brings this film brilliantly to life. Yet, for this very reason, many viewers will find it boring.

New Dawn Fades

[N_Sgo · 9/10 · 17 September 2007]

"...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.

I Don't Get It

[bushing-1 · 2/10 · 19 March 2009]

I greatly enjoy most Chinese films not to mention films in general. This film I just don't get. I fell asleep the first time I tried to watch it. I resumed watching the next day at the point I last remembered seeing. When the end unexpectedly reared its ugly head, I wished that all the characters (vs the actors of course) had died in the movie and put us all out of our misery. These characters had nothing about them to get me interested in them as characters or in their story. They were pure and simple... bored and very boring. Other than a little eye candy in the form of the female lead (who was nonetheless also without any real interest), I saw nothing worth spending the two hours I did with this film. If you have absolutely no inner resources, perhaps you will identify with these characters. Otherwise I'd run when you see the DVD cover.

Great Film

[petehumble · 8/10 · 28 May 2011]

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.

Not much there

[bob998 · 4/10 · 1 February 2022]

Jia's films put me in mind of Manny Farber's pronouncement on Godard, how he 'surrounds the spectator with long stretches of aggressive, complicated nothingness.' The complicated nothingness is very much on display here. We really don't know how Bin Bin and his friend Xiau Ji are going to address their troubles (actually they don't) and we lose interest in them very fast. This film features the most inept bank robbery in the history of cinema, you may die laughing.

Best film yet this year

[[e-mail] · 10 April 2003]

I'm confused as to why people would still give the pleasant peasant fables of Zhang Yimou house-room now we're offered a view of intense, complex, and contemporary Chinese cinema like this. I adored the extreme negativity of this film's most repetitive moments: Xiao Ji getting slapped about the face ("having a good time?" "yes" "having a good time?" "yes" "having a good time?" "yes" "having a good time?" "yes"...) or trying repeatedly to drive up a slight slope on his motorbike. The very repeatability of film seems to highlight the way that only this silly, essentially boring medium gets at what's going on when stuff happens, in capitalist China as well as at home...

Two Chinese bros bumble and stumble around their provincial backwater as they try to manage their relationships and lack of opportunities on the lower end of society

[alant-89783 · 8/10 · 21 August 2015]

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.

Absolute Masterpiece

[mdkiem · 9/10 · 2 February 2018]

A poem to the millions of young men in China who are tempted and beguiled by the promises of a rapidly economically advancing society but are unable to turn those promises into reality. There are new roads in all directions but your scooter won't get you anywhere. The lyrics of the song perfectly fit the hopes and frustrations of the young men. BTW, the characters in this movie are not so much influenced by American culture as they are by the consumerism and globalization of the Chinese economy. "Are you having fun?"

Insipid

[=G= · 4/10 · 19 March 2004]

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-)

Expecting much more

[aslz · 9 July 2004]

I don't recall where I read a favorable review of this art film, but if I did I would make sure I don't rent anything else they recommend. This film went nowhere. Two Chinese boys with no motivation. They don't take any risks really, and neither do the filmmakers. I was not left with any particular emotion or thought. Photographically it was OK. Perhaps the filmmaker was going for Bergman type effect of portraying emotional emptiness. And maybe its a cultural translation I'm not getting.

Saw parts of China not seen before - the more urban dirty landscape.. So that was a plus. I liked the girl. Her character had the most um, character.

Murky account of contemporary China.

[Mozjoukine · 3 August 2002]

Learning that this film is from the makers of the tedious PLATFORM is not encouraging and the new work has the same murky color and long, unedited shot coverage.

However this one benefits from the stronger narrative elements - nihilistic kids turn to crime as their ambitions are thwarted, no mating with the traveling show chantoosie or becoming a Beijing soldier - along with the detailed account of joyless small town Datong Province life in decaying buildings where finding a US dollar in the liquor bottle the entertainers are plugging represents sudden fortune.

In the line of BEIJING BASTARDS and less engaging that GE GE/ BROTHER which covers much the same ground, this still suggests that the Chinese cinema may be evolving a sub-surface layer of effective, critical entertainment.