The documentary genre is something like a martini -- its classic form gets no respect from purveyors of cute trends.
And to documentary purists, 24 City, Jia Zhang-Ke's narrative/doc about the conversion of a longtime munitions plant in the southwest Chinese city of Chengdu into a sparkling combined condo complex and four-star hotel, would be akin to a crantini.
We've seen docudramas. We've seen documentaries with dramatized segments and dramas with docu-segments (Reds, American Splendor). But we don't recall seeing a documentary about a real event where some of the interviewees are actual people and others are actors portraying composites of actual people (he reportedly interviewed 130), with no identification of which is which.
(The conceit becomes most painfully obvious with the introduction of "Little Flower," a character named after a Joan Chen movie because of her ostensible resemblance to Joan Chen. Naturally, she's played by Joan Chen).
The approach suggests either laziness from the documentarian standpoint (unlikely, considering the meticulousness of Jia's filmmaking), or expediency, the desire to make fact-like testimony fit neatly into a pre-conceived theme.
That theme is the good old requiem for the good old days. In this case, the overarching reality is the conversion of China from sometimes rosily recalled collectivism to a ferociously eager embrace of the peculiar Chinese form of capitalism. Between interviews and tales-told, the camera often pans the empty industrial space, suggesting the presence of ghosts.
24 City is best viewed with no pretense of it being a documentary. Thus absolved of having to provide context, it can be appreciated for its narrative, a past-meets-present series of melodramas. And that includes the aforementioned Little Flower, and her sad tale of a marriage that seemed meant to be but wasn't, or a high-flying young woman (Zhao Tao) who works as a "buyer" for rich businessmen and who visits the factory where her mother worked, there to finally, emotionally, comprehend the drudgery of her mother's existence.
There's also a then-and-now tale of a driven shift boss in Cold War days -- so devoted to maximizing production, he used tools until they were worn to virtually nothing -- who is visited in his sad dotage by a man who was once his underling.
There's no knowing how much influence the Chinese government still exerts over the creative impulses of its filmmakers, and how much this might affect the nostalgia that pervades 24 City.
Certainly, the life recalled is one of hardship, but there's an elegaic quality to the remembrance of stability and predictability.
Clearly, the filmmaker considers his countrymen's embrace of a bourgeois lifestyle to be the worse of two evils, a roaring economic monster that devours China's history and replaces it with pop songs and movies.
Given that this movie was shot two years ago (it was part of last year's Toronto International Film Festival), it would be interesting to revisit his take on the New China, now that the country has experienced the flipside of capitalism, a crash.
(This film is rated G)
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