Useless

2007

1 hr. 20 min.

Documentary

List

71%

7 Reviews

Tomatometer

73%

100+ Ratings

Audience Score

Chinese designer Ke Ma looks for her big break in the global fashion scene.

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Audience Member

Magnificent work once again from Jia. Stringing together three narratively disparate segments as he follows his theme of fashion in China, Jia refuses to include narration, giving the film an open-ended feel, as if he wants to show the viewer the Chinese fashion industry from all angles and allow us to draw our own conclusions. In doing so, the visual echoes and graceful tracking shots lend a poetic air to the issue at hand. Beautiful filmmaking.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/26/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Amazing documentary about the Chinese textile industry by Jia Zhang Ke, narrated by the excellent cinematography of Yu Likwai, whose camera effortlessly seems to float across the factory floors of Guangzhou and along the dirty roads of Shanxi. Jia's movie operates both within macro- and microlevel, comparing soulless assembly line production with the work of rogue fashion designer Ma Ke, but while Chinese fashion might count for something during Paris Fashionweek, it remains, as the title might suggest, useless to most people in China. What you wear becomes a matter of class, in China as anywhere else.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

01/29/23

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Audience Member

Running my film fest at home, I enjoy watching "Useless", another meaningful production by Jia Jiangke, my favourite mainland director. Through exploring the details of clothes making, a genre seldom covered by film makers, "Useless" unleashes the value of those dedicated to this tedious process. Hand-made, uniquely-designed clothing is on the verge of extinction nowadays, except for the bizarrely exorbitant high-society haute couture. It's virtually non-existent on the Mainland. "Useless" is a sarcastic name of a film for something treasured by people who believe craftsmanship and creativity can transmit human feelings and preserve history. "Useless" interviewed a tailor-turned-miner on why he couldn't profess to be a tailor amid industrialization that breeds cost-effective mass production. "Useless" showed how designer Ma Ke built a Chinese brand of clothes made by hands and with care, instead of routine industrial production that kills the bond of makers and users. Workers lining up for a treatment at a clinic at a vast industrial estate in Guangzhou showed their wound got from garment factories. Humble miners and housewives in remote Fenyang (director's home town) walked a long way to get adjustors' help to re-sew their broken clothes. "Useless" scenes are rough, dusty and fanciless but workers' muddy hands and nails, moving needles of sewing machines, stained pipelines and dark coal mines are poetic and of beauty.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/03/23

Full Review

Audience Member

gostei da reflexÃ£o sobre algo que em geral passa desapercebido ao pensamento e parece um tema vulgar. Da manufatura ao uso, o percurso da vestimenta Ã© vasculhado e discutido nas suas bifurcaÃ§Ãµes. HÃ¡ a grande fÃ¡brica da produÃ§Ã£o e da vida em massa, hÃ¡ a estilista que resiste ao descartÃ¡vel dos tempos de consumo, hÃ¡ costureiras e alfaiates num mundo de produÃ§Ã£o em sÃ©rie que nÃ£o tem mais lugar para eles. Tem algo de documentÃ¡rio ensaiado, dÃ¡ a impressÃ£o de que as pessoas estÃ£o orientadas para serem reais do jeito que o diretor quer. NÃ£o sei se isso Ã© muito honesto. Mas os longos planos, com panorÃ¢micas lentas e minuciosas, te instiga a prestar atenÃ§Ã£o em mais e mais coisas. AtenÃ§Ã£o para as idÃ©ias da estilista Ma Ke. Sua preocupaÃ§Ã£o Ã© com a tendÃªncia destes tempos em tornarmos tudo ao nosso redor descartÃ¡vel e sem histÃ³ria. JÃ¡ Ã© urgente se duvidar da sustentabilidade deste modelo, mas o que Ma Ke observa Ã© mais profundo: Estamos esvaziando o mundo de significado.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

02/11/23

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Audience Member

Beautiful, impressionistic and thoughtful.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/23/23

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Audience Member

What a disappointment after seeing "Still Life" last year. Lost focus from the garment vs tailoring industry he set out to portrait. The last 20 mins seemed to be an ad hoc add-on.

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

02/08/23

Full Review

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Zhang-Ke Jia

Director

Ke Ma

Self

Youyishanren

Producer

Nelson Lik-wai Yu

Producer

Tao Zhao

Producer

Keung Chow

Executive Producer

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Richard Brody

New Yorker

Zhangke eludes the genre's constraints to provide a revelatory documentary view of inner and outer life in contemporary China.

Jan 8, 2018

Full Review

Chris Chang

Film Comment Magazine

But whether in Ma Ke's placid environs or amidst the squall of the machines, Jia's almost constantly moving camera seems to bring an elegiac tranquility to everything it observes.

Jun 17, 2013

Full Review

Nick Schager

Lessons of Darkness

Jia's empathetic close-ups -- thanks to Yu Lik Wai's masterful HD cinematography -- ground the film's portrait in individual experience.

Rated: B+

Dec 4, 2007

Full Review

Daniel Kasman

d+kaz. intelligent movie reviews

Rated: B

Nov 17, 2011

Full Review

Donald J. Levit

ReelTalk Movie Reviews

The love and craft that went into Jia's earlier films are also apparent in 'Useless,' but exactly what he is saying, is not.

Oct 20, 2007

Full Review

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Synopsis

Chinese designer Ke Ma looks for her big break in the global fashion scene.

Director: Zhang-Ke Jia
Executive Producer: Keung Chow, Jianmin Kang, Jihong Mao
Genre: Documentary
Original Language: Chinese