A fragmentary landscape for a little train station in a suburban area and a bus stop in a mining town. A lonely soldier in his heavy coat, a tired old man, a bubbly young lady, a punk, a woman waiting in the street... From all those different people in these unfamiliar places, we can feel the exhaustion of every life.
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Reviews
A Disappointing Continuation
It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.
All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.
Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.
This short by Zhang Ke is, in a way, a distillation of his usual concerns and aesthetic sensibilities. It has no dialogue, no acting, no story. It starts with documentations of working class transportation (trains, buses), then moves on to show people waiting in a train station, the camera lovingly probes some crippled party politician, sitting and smiling in his wheelchair complete with Mao Ze Dong pictures and red and golden banners. Then we move on to a dance hall (a usual meeting place for Zhang Ke), where a dance lesson is in session. All in all, quite moving, strangely compelling. Another piece in the director's ongoing documentation of the modern-China puzzle.