• It’s the story of Tao (Tao Zhao) and her love choices and family—but also, because it’s Zhangke Jia- it’s about China and modernization. He tells it in 3 acts set in 1999, 2014 and 2025
  • Zhangke Jia calls it “democratic” framing—the way he holds a scene and is ambiguous about the characters to let the sophisticated viewer make their own choices- there’s a lot less of that here- it plays closer to a straight drama
  • Changing landscape of China both physically—but mainly here towards the westernization of China and Zhangke’s criticism of it—song to open and close “Go West” song played as a dystopian reminder as it takes away these characters roots, languages, ability to communicate and see family
  • First setting is Fenyang—Zhangke Jia’s hometown
  • The 1999 story is a love triable—a few cultural musical interludes shot digitally but he doesn’t keep this up in 2014 or 2025 sections
  • Impact of time on China and ourselves or characters—title of film
  • 46 minutes before credits—crazy—lone prelude
  • Another story of unrequited love—a coal miner vs city rich “westernized” character (Yi Zhang)
  • Unfortunately—much more of a straight melodrama then platform—not a lot of ambiguity
  • Rich guy changes name to English name and moves to Australia. Son’s name is Dollar” and literally can’t communicate with Dad because he doesn’t speak Chinese and dad never learned English
  • Everyone depressingly forced to speak English, there’s eating McDonalds in 2025 as well- odd propagandistic dystopia in the 3rd act
  • You’re also asking these actors to, largely, act in English and it doesn’t go well
  • Melodramatic music
  • Little to none (although the picture above is nice) of the architecture used in platform– clearly a vastly superior work
  • Recommend but on the fringes- not near my top 10 of 2015