The World (2004, Jia Zhangke)

Dug this a little better than Jia's last feature (the interminable Unkown Pleasures) but not by a lot. It is helped immensely by its setting, The World Park, which contains small-scale restagings of various landmarks (The Great Pyramids, Manhattan with the twin towers, etc.) See the world without ever leaving Beijing! Still it was generally aimless, following a group of Chinese youth for 2.5 hours into a odd depressing finish with not a great deal of thematic binding of any type that I could see. There are entire subplots I could see done away with that you would never notice. I found the relationship between the main female protagonist and her Russian co-worker interesting and touching, but I couldn't say how it related to the rest of the movie at all. I'd still like to see Platform, but I'm thinking at this point that Jia is just not my thing.