Themes: Down on Their Luck, Journey of Self-Discovery
Main Cast: Zhao Tao, Chen Taisheng, Jing Jue, Jiang Zhong-wei, Wang Yi-qun
Release Year: 2004
Country: CN/FR/JP
Run Time: 143 minutes
Plot
Chinese writer/director Jia Zhang Ke's The World is his fourth feature, but it's his first set in a major city, and the first film he's made with the cooperation of the Chinese government. The World is set at the eponymous amusement park in Beijing. Tao (Zhao Tao, who played the Mongolian King girl, Qiao Qiao, in Jia's Unknown Pleasures) is a dancer at the park, which contains scale replicas of landmarks from around the globe. "The Twin Towers were bombed on September 11," says Taisheng (Chen Taisheng), a security guard, proudly, pointing to a miniature New York City skyline, "but ours are still here!" Tao is dating Taisheng, who, like her, moved to Beijing from the provinces for work years earlier. Taisheng thinks Tao is just stringing him along until she finds somebody better, so he gets involved with another woman, Qun (Wang Yi-qun), who makes her living creating knockoffs of Western fashions. Xiaowei (Jing Jue), another dancer, also dates a security guard at the theme park. Niu (Jiang Zhong-wei) is extremely jealous and possessive, and constantly demands to know where Xiaowei spends her time. Youyou (Xiang Wan), who also performs at the park, is secretly dating the boss. When a group of Russian performers comes to work at the park, Tao befriends one of them, despite the language barrier. Friends of Taisheng arrive from the provinces, desperate for work. One of them is injured in a construction accident. The characters often communicate through text messages, which Jia displays in animated sequences. The World was shown by the Film Society of Lincoln Center at the 2004 New York Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
Review
Jia Zhang Ke's The World continues along the same path as Platform and Unknown Pleasures, but it's livelier. This gorgeous, profoundly melancholy distillation of contemporary China's precarious global position is his most accessible film to date. From the stunning opening tracking shot, in which Tao (Zhao Tao) glides through the backstage of the eponymous amusement park, loudly asking for a Band-Aid, Jia cannily conflates the magical and the prosaic. The World may end with a whimper, but it certainly starts with a bang. That opening immediately establishes a strong sense of community, but by the end of the film, we learn that among the working class in contemporary Beijing, the bonds of friendship and romance are ephemeral by necessity. People arrive because they have to, like the desperate men who follow Taisheng (Chen Taisheng) from the country looking for work, and leave when they can. As Tao makes clear, noting of a passing plane that she's never met anyone who's flown anywhere, even with a chintzy miniature replica of the globe at their disposal, the prospects of ever really going anywhere are slim. Tao and her co-workers take solace in colorful (if monotonous) performances, and in the strange but undeniable beauty of the park itself. Fantasies of flight and adventure are reserved for the animated sequences that Jia uses to highlight the frequent text messages his characters send each other, as though through this fleeting interconnectedness with each other -- and through a technology that binds them to the "real" world they never see -- these people find a space to dream. Jia ends his beautifully shot, heartbreaking film on an odd note, which does nothing to dissipate the film's haunting spell. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
Cast
Zhao Tao - Tao
Chen Taisheng - Taisheng
Jing Jue - Xiaowei
Jiang Zhong-wei - Niu
Wang Yi-qun - Qun
Wang Hong Wei - Sanlai; Liang Jing-dong - Tao's Ex-Boyfriend; Xiang Wan - Youyou; Liu Juan - Yanqing
Credit
Wu Lizhong - Art Director, Jia Zhang Ke - Director, Kong Jinglei - Editor, Lim Giong - Composer (Music Score), Yu Lik Wai - Cinematographer, Hengameh Panahi - Producer, Shozo Ichiyama - Producer, Chow Keung - Producer, Zhang Yang - Sound/Sound Designer, Jia Zhang Ke - Screenwriter
In 2005, Glover proposed a new compact newspaper to be titled The World. He wanted to model the newspaper on the French newspaper Le Monde and shun celebrity-oriented tabloid news. He originally hoped to launch the paper in 2005 or early 2006, but the project never got off the ground.
Glover claimed to require only £15 million to launch The World, less than the budget for The Independent 20 years earlier.
