World (DVD)

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Most of "The World" is set inside Beijing´s World Park, a theme park with a collection of re-creations of global landmarks. I spent five months in China without ever hearing about this place. Apparently, this kitschy attraction isn´t advertised for foreigners. What would be the point of showing people what they´ve already seen? As "The World" makes abundantly clear, most of the park´s visitors are Chinese who, like Tao, will never have the chance to step foot outside of China.

"The World" has a large cast and examines several issues, but most of our attention is directed to Tao. Tao works at World Park in varying capacities--as an Indian in front of the Taj Mahal, as a flight stewardess in a now-grounded airplane, as a dancer in the park´s several stage productions, etc. Her boyfriend followed her from the countryside to Beijing and works as a security guard in the park. They love each other, but their relationship has plateaued. Therefore, the boyfriend strikes up a close friendship with an associate´s sister; he´s not "cheating" on Tao because he´s a sex fiend but because their holding pattern seems destined for an end.

While the movie is a drama through and through, it is the funniest non-dramedy drama that I´ve seen. The movie begins with Tao bellowing, "Does anyone have a bandage?" for three and a half minutes while she walks down a hall filled with dressing rooms. It´s not possible to convey how hilarious this is; you´ll have to see it for yourself. Me? I was doubling over at the sight of Tao dressed in a sari while looking for a bandage.

Zhang Ziyi isn´t the only Chinese actress who has pretended to be a Japanese geisha. In "The World", Tao and her co-workers sometimes dress up as geishas in the Japanese areas of World Park. Precisely because these simulations were assembled with great care but are so atrocious due to their campiness, every new "attraction" will make you giggle or laugh out loud. At one point, Tao is dressed as a bride, and she stands in a doorway with an impressive view of the Arc de Triomphe. Getting married under the Arc de Triomphe is about as majestic as weddings can get, but we know that there is a huge disconnect between the apparent image and reality. World Park even includes a monorail that is so creaky that it makes sense that only Tao is brave enough to ride in it.

"The World" also comments on the superficiality of piracy and knock-offs. In the West, you only hear about how Hollywood and fashion designers lose billions of dollars to piracy and knock-offs. While this has some basis in fact, it is also an ugly claim to make; forget about the moral rights related to intellectual property--we just want money! In China, the piracy of movies has a powerful political value; people get to see movies that are banned and "subversive". One could argue that piracy is a good thing for many reasons in politically oppressive countries. On the other hand, fashion knock-offs reflect and fuel the materialistic vanities of young people. This is indicative of the vicious cycles perpetrated by the pursuit of money for the sake of physical benefits without improving the quality of life.

It´s not interesting watching people look at their mobile phones or computer screens. Jia Zhangke knows this and inserted brief animation sequences into the movie when the characters receive text messages. These animation sequences do a great job of illustrating how the characters feel. For example, when Tao´s boyfriend receives a message from his associate´s sister, the movie shows him charging to the rescue on a white horse while pink hearts escape from his mouth. Later, when Tao realizes that her boyfriend has been "close" with another woman, the movie shows an underwater scene with rising bubbles. This indicates that Tao is drowning in despair.

Watching "The World" barely a month after leaving China was an act of immediate nostalgia. The sights and sounds were things that had become familiar to me, from uniformed guards carrying giant water bottles on their shoulders to KTV girls wearing gaudily shiny dresses, from the use of Roman-alphabet transliterations on street signs and documents to restaurants that were as noisy as rock concerts, from the melting pot of Chinese voices all speaking different Chineses to the incessant rings of text-message alerts. Before I went to China, "The World" would´ve seemed foreign; after having lived in China, "The World" was a showcase of things that were simultaneously a part of and not a part of my reality.

You might be wondering by now, what the hell do Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg have to do with "The World"? Not much, really. Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg make movies about characters with daddy issues, and I have daddy issues. They both released movies when I had a busy year circumnavigating the world, and they, like Jia Zhangke with "The World" and Zhang Ziyi, made movies that left deep impressions on me for personal reasons. Like I wrote at the beginning of this "review", movie-reviewing is more about reviewers than it is about movies.

Video:
The 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen image was shot with digital-video cameras. (I don´t know if the DVD video transfer was taken from a digital source such as a hard drive or a digital-video tape or from a film print.) People familiar with shooting with film and shooting with DV will be able to notice the tell-tale signs when watching "The World", such as the much-lower resolution of DV when compared to film (1,000 lines to film´s 5,000 lines), image ghosting, muddy colors, and the presence of "noise" rather than film grain. Still, it´s a sign of how far DV has come when I felt that most of the movie looked like it was shot with low-grade 16mm film stock. The video image is completely free of debris. While the colors are rather muted and the picture is a tad dark, it´s easy to see how affordable digital video enables more and more people to make their voices heard. (To be sure, some voices are worthless, but they still deserve to be heard.)

Audio:
The Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo Chinese (various dialects) audio track is a lively affair, which makes sense given the chaos of voices and the use of beat-intensive techno music. I remember seeing this in a theatre and being hit by raucous mix (previous low-budget imports from China usually had constricted, muffled audio). Still, the audio is more energetic than it is "good" in that this is not an innovative sound design. It does its job well, but it doesn´t venture into new territory.

Optional English subtitles support the audio. I strongly recommend using them even if you understand Mandarin Chinese. The actors use several different dialects, and some of them speak Mandarin with thick accents.

(The subtitles aren´t perfect. In one instance, the subtitles translate "Chi cu" as "eat vinegar". Yes, "Chi cu" is literally "eat vinegar", but "Chi cu" actually means "to be jealous".)

Extras:
The DVD offers a collection of still photos from the production, including shots of scenes that did not make it into the final cut of the movie and shots of the camera-shy director. These photos are of better quality than the main feature´s video, so they are definitely worth a look.

What´s billed as an interview with critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, who´s a big champion of this movie, is actually a trailer that was used in Canada. This trailer offers a few superficial comments that are much less illuminating than Rosenbaum´s review for the "Chicago Reader".

You also get the American trailer.

--Miscellaneous--
A glossy booklet provides cast, crew, and DVD credits; director´s notes about various issues in the movie; promotional notes about Beijing´s World Park; notes about the movie´s many characters; and chapter listings. This informative booklet is helpful in distinguishing the movie´s many key characters.

Film Value:
As my colleagues Chris Long and Hock Guan Teh wrote in their reviews of "Platform" and "Unknown Pleasures" (respectively), Jia Zhangke has a tendency to let his movies ramble. "The World", clocking in at 138 minutes, is also guilty of padding. (I´ve read that the movie is shorter in China than elsewhere, though it was trimmed for commercial reasons rather than political ones.) Yet, it has an undeniably powerful effect on patient, intelligent viewers as it quietly observes how empty and destructive capitalism can be when free-market development occurs without a strong sense of moral responsibility. "The World" does not have a political agenda in that it doesn´t attack the Chinese government, but like so many other Chinese movies of this ilk, by simply showing viewers the harsh realities of contemporary life for average Chinese citizens, the movie is an indictment of both an economy run amok and Western greed in demanding access to Chinese consumers.

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