Synopsis
A small town pickpocket whose friends have moved on to higher trades finds himself bitter and unable to adapt.
A small town pickpocket whose friends have moved on to higher trades finds himself bitter and unable to adapt.
Xiao Wu, The Pickpocket, 一瞬の夢, Xiao Wu, artisan pickpocket, Вор-карманник, Artesão Pickpocket, 소무, Кишеньковий злодій
From the outset, Jia established himself as a filmmaker directly facing China's period of transition, foregrounding here the Hong Kong handover to depict a society caught between the twin poles of police-state social control and equally dehumanizing capitalism. Xiao Wu is a pickpocket whose former comrades have all gone straight, making amusing ties between the world of street crime and respectable capitalism. Yet any romanticism that could be applied to the man is lost in his complete social dissociation, leaving him to roam lost around Fenyang and hold one-sided conversations with others where he remains almost entirely silent, unsure what to say and willing to seem rude rather than stupid. The sound design on this is bewilderingly great, resembling the…
Was great to revisit this film (shot on 16mm) on 35mm at the Vancouver Intl. Film Centre. You can definitely see some of Jia's controlled mise-en-scène starting to develop with this film although for the most part, it is shot docu-style which is heightened by the presence of non-professionals.
Didn't notice this the first time around, but just as Xiao Wu is getting lost in his romantic reverie, when he's had a bath and started to sing, it's Jia himself who busts in to remind him that he's a lowlife and all his friends hate him, sending him on his inevitable slide to ruin.
"Are you tired of living? Asking to be caught?"
Always cool to see a director come out the gate with their career-long political interests and formal tics already fairly fully-formed. Jia would obviously hone these techniques and his control over them (honestly pretty quickly, Platform was only a few years away) but you've already got the guerilla neorealist docufiction shooting style that incorporates non-actors and the harsh real-life location rubble of a literally crumbling past, the experimental focus on duration and handheld long takes tracking a stripped down minimalist narrative of inertia in this face of this society in purgatory, and of course all the romantic yearning Cantopop that expressively signals a desperation for connection and escape. You've also got…
Pickpocket, Jia Zhangke's full length debut, is ironically the odd one out among Jia's quite luminous filmography. It's clearly a process of forging an identity for Jia, as it resembles more of a traditional, hyper realistic output from the likes of Abbas Kiarostami or Zhang Yimou, rather than Jia's own bizarre, painfully funny Chinese modern vignettes. Nevertheless, Pickpocket still possesses the all too familiar emotional powers and razor sharp insights into the Chinese way of living, and is arguably Jia's most technically immaculate work to date.
Pickpocket is a deeply grounded story with outpouring humanity, which rightfully earned its Kiarostami comparisons. A retired pickpocket juggling his newly developed romance and an uncomfortable reunion with an old friend is an intriguing…
Cigratte after cigarette in rundown KTV bars and not a single ash tray in sight, karaoke machines and pool tables set up outdoors by the roadside allowing anyone to just stop by and watch or participate, that's rural china baby. Cheap speakers, lighters that play Für Elise every time you flick it, glasses that cover half of your face, we used to fold red envelopes by hand, man. Jia Zhang Ke made an invaluable time capsule here.
"This is a film about our worries and our uneasiness. Having to cope with a dysfunctional society, we take refuge in solitude which is a substitute for dignity… It is finally a film about my native town and about contemporary China." - Jia Zhangke
Perfect “no one is prepared for the 21st century” film. Perfect longing film. Perfect “musical.” Life is the following: you receive a text (page), you’re immediately arrested, and you’re dying to know the message; hours later, your arresting police officer tells you, “It’s just a weather notification: it’s sunny out.” Later, you receive a second text. It’s the love of your life. You’re dying to know what she said. Again, a cop tells you: She sends her best wishes.
Excellent, gritty and realistic account of a petty criminal left behind by his old pals that can adapt to new aggregational develeopments of contemporary chinese society. A bit too long, maybe, and losing its track in the last half hour, but that's just minor criticism in an overall superb film. Cinematography by genius Yu Lik-wai.
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Jia Zhangke's first film is one of his more conventional, but like last year's A Touch of Sin, Jia in genre mode is still more Jia than genre. Sure, the narrative is slow and oblique, but the main character is a recognizable generic type, a young man of questionable morals (he's a pickpocket) alienated in turn from old friends, a romantic interest and family (he also looks like young Woody Allen and acts like young Robert DeNiro). A politically potent depiction of a rapidly changing society, trapped in the contradiction between state terror and laissez-faire capitalism to be sure. But more than that it's about being a self-centered, kind of dumb, young person in caught in a world you never…
Socialist morality finding itself marginalized in a market economy, a relic residing in the lumpenproletariat. There is no friendship, no romance, no familial love. All those old reactionary values returned to justify a new economic system. Xiao Wu's gifts are rejected, denied by circumstance or given to others. His gestures have lost their sacredness.
Mao's portrait, reduced to a token, stares blankly at a country that's left him behind.
Seen on the Criterion Channel
Jia Zhangke's debut charts those left behind by encroaching modernism. We follow a pickpocket, doing the only thing he knows how to do and the only thing that has brought him anything. The cinematography is cold and impersonal, a dirty look too with overtones of brown and beige. It's all very washed out and sad, a reflection of our protagonist's state.
Around the edge of the film, we see change. Yet, we see more destruction and loss than we see progress. People are being turfed out of places, having to spend above their means to facilitate the progression of others and generally being left behind by societal drift. At points, we have the technological icons of modernity, frequent cuts to…