Fridae

The World referred to in this film is the egregious tourist site
World Park in Beijing which goes by the tagline: visit the world
without leaving Beijing. It houses scaled-down replicas of world-famous
monuments like the Taj Mahal, St. Martin's Square and the Eiffel
Tower. Sounds tacky. But such tackiness is precisely what the film
utilises to its advantage.

One of the leading lights of the Sixth Generation filmmakers of
Mainland China, Jia Zhengke is interested in the alienation and
inauthenticities that mark the canvas of contemporary society like
misplaced brushstrokes. His previous films, Platform and
Unknown Pleasures, were honest depictions of life in modern-day
China. Viewed through a no-frills camera, they offered more than
a glimpse into a fractured and dissonant sense of being —
they were moving images, in all sense of the word. The World,
his latest, is no less impressive.

More surreal than his previous directorial visions, The World
essentially weaves the tales of three characters who are all workers
in the theme-park. They lead lives of routines and dead-ends, and
even when they have The World literally in their hands they are
still marginalised figures barred from sharing in the triumphs of
the capitalist society in which they exist.

A staggeringly heartbreaking work of genius, Jia Zhengke's World
is never one to sacrifice intellectual rigour to the false demands
of saccharine commerce whose prevalence in today's film is indeed
bewitching. If you can only afford to watch one film this week,
make it this one.