Review of The World

Zhang Ke Jia is a talented director, there's no doubt. He creates moods and images of beauty and loneliness, ones that feel lived in. Unfortunately, he's not the best screenwriter in the world. There are a lot of themes and points of interest in The World, which is about a Beijing theme park that contains all the world's greatest monuments and the employees who work there. These employees mostly have never been out of China. Some of them have migrated to Beijing from the country, and some have maybe never left Beijing. But much like his previous two films, Platform and Unknown Pleasures, there isn't a single character worth knowing here. I don't understand the (mostly Asian) art-house trend of populating films with characters who are shallow and bored with life. Characters who are bored with life are just, well, boring. Much like Platform, the dozens of characters here are so interchangeable that their mostly trite stories became mixed up in my mind. Someday I think Zhang Ke Jia will make a really good film. The potential is there.