I must confess I never understood Jia's appeal.
I've tried to glean a more coherent idea of him by
occasioinally reading this board, but so far with
little success. I've only seen one and a half of
his films. _Unknown Pleasure_ just struck me as
visually ugly. Perhaps this is due to my watching
it on my pitiful 15" TV, but (to take a random sample
of recent DVD viewings) _Devils on the Door Steps_,
_Damnation_, and a slew of films by Neil Jordan
(whom I used to think of as mainly a brilliant story
teller) have impressed me so much more visually.
I read so much rave reviews of his composition and
such here. Would someone care to list a few scenes
I should go back and look at?


I walked out of _The World_ halfway through. It is
certainly much more beautifully shot, and a couple
of characters actually don't seem to be stereotypical
call youths, but that night I couldn't endure another hour
of lovers' bickering on screen ...
.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "samfilms2003" <samw@...> wrote:
>
>
> > "China is economically stagnant,
> > therefore I will not kiss my girlfriend."
>
> And when China's on an economic roll, then what ? ;-)
>
It had a 8% growth last year, which isn't that bad! And
not just rich capitalists gained from globalization.
Artists like Jia got not just their inspiration from
Western cinema (_Unknown Pleasure_ is filled from one
end to the other with naked cinematic homages), but also
much funding and appreciation. Hopefully no one thinks
Russian prostitutes in China is a good thing, but instead
of making superficial critique of superficial globalization,
wouldn't it be better, and more honest, to oppose it
with a more profound and spiritual type of globalization?
Of course I didn't stay to the end; maybe he did just
that later on. I doubt the word "globalization" even
crossed Malick's mind, but I thought _The New World_ does
so much more to explore the concept than Jia's film.

Just because of my prejudice perhaps, I'd hate to think
of Jia as the poster boy of the "6th generation" directors.
I've really admired Lou Ye's _Purple Butterfly_, and
_Devils on the Door Steps_ is as technically sophisticated
as it is ideologically troubling. I even prefer _Blind
Shaft_ and _Frozen_. I haven't watched enough recent
Chinese films but Jia does seem to suck all the oxygen out of
discussions on cinema out of China.