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Play trailer Poster for Platform Released Sep 4, 2000 2h 34m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
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80% Tomatometer 20 Reviews 79% Popcornmeter 1,000+ Ratings
A group of friends experiences social, political and cultural changes in China from 1979 to 1989.

Critics Reviews

View All (20) Critics Reviews
Empire Magazine Rated: 4/5 Dec 30, 2006 Full Review Ed Gonzalez Slant Magazine A laconic portrait of a remote Chinese city in arrested development. Rated: 4/4 May 23, 2004 Full Review V.A. Musetto New York Post Awesome filmmaking. Rated: 3/4 Mar 14, 2003 Full Review David Walsh World Socialist Web Site Jia works slowly and patiently, treating complex social and emotional problems with extraordinary confidence and pictorial skill. Feb 16, 2021 Full Review Film Threat Rated: 3/5 Dec 6, 2005 Full Review Jeffrey M. Anderson Combustible Celluloid Tells a specifically Chinese story, and yet it does so in a completely universal way. Sep 23, 2005 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

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Audience Member "Ma, you should liberate your thoughts!" "You should try self-criticism!" "People can work in those pants?" "I'm an art-worker--no manual work." "You sound more like a capitalist roader." I don't think there's a greater living film-maker, with a greater contemporary subject-matter, than Jia Zhang Ke. And this is a more poignant and even epic coming-of-age film than the best such Hollywood movies. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/24/23 Full Review Audience Member One of those movies which hypnotize and suck the viewer into a world of it's own... After the first few reels, it feels almost like living and growing up through the cultural changes in China... Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/26/23 Full Review Audience Member Follows a group of young 20-somethings in the early 80s as China undergoes a cultural shift. This is one of the hardest kinds of films to make successfully--that of a generation and a town stuck and going nowhere--and the director can't pull it off entirely without some of that boredom seeping into the audience. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/20/23 Full Review Audience Member Great bit of story telling from Zhang Ke Jia. It is a depiction of China in a moment of transition moving from Mao to the free market beliefs of his successors. Through the eyes of a theatre troupe, it is compelling film making. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/07/23 Full Review Audience Member Watching felt like homework. Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/22/23 Full Review Audience Member Spanning from 1979 to 1990, Jia's film tackles the sociocultural changes in China that followed the Open Door policy of the 1980s by tracing the lives of a group of performers in a Cultural Troupe (from peasant songs to breakdance electronic). Although we stick with a few principals, the long shot long take method makes them less the focus than the surrounding context, thereby underscoring the larger theme of cultural change and its impact. Impressively, the effects wrought by time are not highlighted by the director but occur more subtly as outside influences on fashion, music, and lifestyle creep in. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/04/23 Full Review Read all reviews
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Movie Info

Synopsis A group of friends experiences social, political and cultural changes in China from 1979 to 1989.
Director
Zhang-Ke Jia
Producer
Li Kit Ming, Shozo Ichiyama
Screenwriter
Zhang-Ke Jia
Genre
Drama
Original Language
Chinese
Release Date (Theaters)
Sep 4, 2000, Original
Runtime
2h 34m
Sound Mix
Dolby Stereo, Dolby A
Aspect Ratio
Flat (1.85:1)