Xiao Wu (1997)

Written and directed by Jia Zhangke

The future’s arriving in the China of Xiao Wu but what it’s being replaced by is not sure. All titular pickpocket Xiao Wu knows is that the world is sliding out from underneath him. His friends have moved onto better prospects than petty crime, and his own brother, now a local entrepreneur, can’t even shake loose an invitation for Xiao to attend his wedding. Worse yet, a new public security policy poses an end to how Xiao makes his living. 

If you think the stacked odds are a jumping board for a hero’s journey where our protagonist finds a new lease on life, think again. Instead, Jia Zhangke’s debut feature is an unadorned story about one person’s inability to adapt, and it follows a fatalistic trajectory where Xiao either indulges delusions and burns his candle from both ends, or simply whiles away the time as if in surrender to the inevitable.

It makes for an alienating watch, because Xiao is alienated to himself. Hongwei Wang, an amateur actor, remains inscrutable for the duration of Zhangke’s film, and his motivations equally so. As things deteriorate, you watch him waste away, antagonize others, and largely turn a willful blind eye to the state of his life, circling the drain which slowly pulls him in. 

It’s not a rosy take by Zhangke, who’d go on to do movies critical of the Chinese system, but these movies mostly tell of systematic failures wherein people become caught, so trotting out a small-time crook as your protagonist and letting him remain largely uninvested in his own narrative is a bold choice and it results in a distancing ride-along. The potential of Zhangke is evident, though. 

Zhangke’s ability as both an emotional and cerebral filmmaker is already obvious. Xiao Wu has a few arresting shots, and a clear visual syntax to it, even if it’s also an unpolished experience. Not just artifice, much of Xiao Wu reads like harsh prose where Xiao’s surroundings and acquaintances do the speaking for him.

The surroundings become the takeaway, this side of China we don’t often get to see. A rural upheaval, it’s an authentic look that’s far from glamorous, but if one of the virtues of movies is its ability to transport us to where we’ve never been, Xiao Wu certainly accomplishes that.  

Still, Zhangke’s movie is not a thrill, nor affecting, moving at a languid pace without much reason as to why, keeping an eye on people walking down an empty alley, or simply life idling. If it’s to mimic how Xiao’s watching his world drift, it certainly accomplishes that. Only Xiao is not engaging company to be in, a taciturn insecure man deteriorating rapidly.

Xiao Wu doesn’t grab you by the collar from the first minute, or any minute for that matter, and its protagonist won’t ask for your interest. Zhangke’s main concern remains with the changing society, and he evokes it clearly, portraying a frustrated experience stuck in the mud with the oncoming train of progress hurtling towards it.