Written and directed by Jia Zhangke
The fractured modernity of Jia Zhangke’s China is on full display in Unknown Pleasures as disaffected youth stand about, smoke to curb their appetites, and wait for hope to completely run out.
Bin Bin (Wei Wei Zhao) is recently out of a job, same can be said for his friend Xiao Ji (Qiong Wu), who’s less down-and-out because he’s obsessing over local singer and actress Qiao Qiao (Tao Zhao). Only problem is she’s dating local gangster Xiao Wu (Hongwei Wang), a man Xiao really ought not mess with.
Despondency for Bin Bin, a little delusion Xiao Ji, and grim economic prospects common to both. Is enlisting in the army the way out for Bin Bin? Can Xiao Ji woo Qiao Qiao? What does Qiao Qiao want from all this?
It’s not really in anyone’s hands, and Unknown Pleasures is a bleak watch as Zhangke’s stark social critique shows us the soul-eroding state of affairs in a place where jobs are hard to come by and opportunity seems to be happening everywhere but here.
Nothing moves in Zhangke’s movie as long takes see people just hang out, exchanging the same tired glances, and generally co-exist like one giant checked-out organism. Only people with a little spring in their step: loan sharks and cops. Should you follow Bin Bin around, it’d be a lot of walking, sitting, demurring phrases, some drinking, and a lot of smoking.
The long takes aren’t a technical flex, but bits of immersion into this impasse. Many takes feel like the camera, along with those it’s recording, are just waiting for something to happen, something that never comes. As its story unfolds, its characters will remain stone faced right up until the point frustration becomes too much to bear, and the general stoicism means any deviation makes you think the actual emotions to run deep.
There’s a deep societal malaise here, and Zhangke doesn’t make light of any of it. In true Zhangke style, however, he also inserts these moments of pitch-black comedy, surreal in their own way, but especially in what’s otherwise a movie defined by raw realism. It’s like a shapeshifting bit of brutalist architecture.
Unknown Pleasures shows how the microeconomic impact of China’s macroeconomic projects has always been Zhangke’s main preoccupation, starting with something character-driven like Xiao Wu and steadily taking a more expansive view of Chinese existence by emphasizing the collective, like life at a theme park in Still Life or the fates of those who dedicated their life to a factory and its community in 24 City.
Unknown Pleasures is still character-driven, but you see Zhangke’s stepping stones as a storyteller. A new mega highway is under construction, not connected to Bin Bin and Xiao Ji’s city, and its smooth concrete feels like a cloud passing overhead of the rickety place these two boys call home, this new bit of infrastructure an uncaring and inescapable entity.
Similarly, a sputtering TV in the streets sees the IOC award the 2008 Olympic Games to Beijing and the dirt poor Chinese gathered around the TV in the street roar while Bin Bin doesn’t move a muscle. A split China is forming, one of progress and wealth that’s projected outwards, and the hard reality of the many hidden out of view.
Many characters in Unknown Pleasures can’t even afford to grimace. Down and out in a plethora of ways, the moments where the facade cracks and they give light to their anguish almost feel like the movie’s more uplifting moments. For there to be hope there has to be want, and the society Zhangke depicts can barely identify something to wish for. Any moment they betray their still-existing basic humanity, is a good moment, dire as things may seem. With its keen assessment of the people’s fate in a modernizing People’s Republic of China, and with its black comedy amidst its pervasive darkness, this is quintessential Zhangke.
Mikkel Frederiksen 