Semidrunk Life: The music of Jia Zhangke

The old is going, but where is the new?

Everyone except this week’s New York Times list agrees that Jia Zhangke has made more great movies over the last 30 years than just about anyone (some competition: Joe Weerasethakul, Claire Denis, oh fine PT Anderson, you say Nolan I say Linklater, maybe Hong Sang-soo depending on your threshold for great.) In preparation for his new Caught by the Tides, I watched or rewatched almost all of his previous fiction features, conveniently available on the Criterion Channel, paying particular to his use of (mostly) diagetic music, which as I say below I didn’t notice was at an all-time level until 2015. I don’t claim this is a unique insight, just that I’m the kind of writer who’ll listen to half a dozen versions of “Dschinghis Khan” for comparative purposes. Since my audience likes grades and I don’t know how to harmonize movie ones with album ones, I’ll use CLASSIC, GREAT, EXCELLENT, and PRETTY GOOD (no need to go lower than that.)

Xiao Shan Going Home (1995)

A very “sure, let’s try a freeze frame” student film. Though Jia couldn’t really write characters yet, there’s plenty for auteurists to dig into—most of his career-long preoccupations (internal migration, social transformation lagging behind economic transformation, the allure and distance of the West and simulacra thereof, smoking) are already here. The hour breezes by for non-auteurists too, especially if you’re mostly listening.

Key music: The credits say some of the music comes from Nescafé Music Time, a syndicated program produced by one-time Radio Caroline DJ Brian Anderson in the ’90s that introduced Jia’s generation of Chinese students to contemporary English-language pop (see the TV documentary above.) Don’t know if they’re the ones who get the credit slash blame for introducing “Runaway Train” and “MMM MMM MMM MMM” to China.

Grade (for the whole movie, not just the music): PRETTY GOOD

Xiao Wu (1997)

Similar ideas, but much more assured, not least visually, as Jia works out how to get expression out of run down store fronts, endless stone alleys, and did I mention the pollution? All that’s lacking is a less shallow female perspective—gee, it’d be convenient if Jia were to find an actress who could basically take care of that for him for the remainder of his career.

Key music: The most plot-important sound is a pager, a reminder, like the dinky “Für Elise” that comes from a cigarette lighter, of just how much sound there is in Chinese-speaking public spaces (Jia will keeping hammering the theme through the ringtone era.) Then there’s “Heart Rain”, a staple karaoke duet a la “Islands in the Stream”, that emphasizes that Chinese people of a certain age don’t really have much vocabulary to describe the social world state capitalism would have them live in, save what popular song grants to them. Even that requires you to sing the lyrics, however.

Grade: GREAT

Platform (2000)

I used to think this slightly too white elephanty, like it was telling you “if you only see one movie to understand the changes in China in the last decades of the 20th century, make it this one.” Well, it is that one (even though said era might be China’s most important transformation in 2,200 years, so there should be a lot more art about it), making visceral the extent and the unevenness of the modernizations, and it’s one of the best movies about bohemians hitting their thirties as well. The 35mm (as approximately by my TV) looks great, as Jia and his regular cinematographer Yu Lik-wai shoot the arches of Fengyang like they’re Masaccio and they’ve just discovered perspective.

Key music: George Lam’s “Genghis Khan”, the introduction to disco for Jia and many Chinese, is a monument to incipient globalization: it’s a translation of a German Eurovision entry that’s appeared in at least ten other languages. It sounds best to me in Lam’s guttural Cantonese, but Berryz Koubou’s J-pop version has its merits, not least making it feel less Me Too-ish.

Grade: CLASSIC

Unknown Pleasures (2002)

This was the first Jia to really break through to me, though it seemed slightly diminished on rewatch now that we’re all used to whiplash handheld DV movements. Still, youthful aimlessness comes through in the repeated actions, and youthful confusion in how patriotic to be in the Beijing 2008 announcement.

Key music: There’s no Joy Division, which is for the best. The actual Chinese title is Ren Xiao Yao (“free of all constraints”), which is the song Bin Bin sings at the end. Originally it was the Richie Jen-sung theme of Taiwanese wuxia show The Return of the Condor Heroes (a sequel to Legend of the Condor Heroes, which WKW kinda sorta adapted into Ashes of Time.) “Xiao Yao” (逍遥) comes from the title of the first chapter of Zhuangzi and yeah I’m extremely not qualified to try to explicate Zhuangzi here.

Grade: GREAT

The World (2004)

Having received a government License to Film, Jia played it a little safe politically—after we get the gist of Fake Paris as an ineffective valve for wanderlust, the movie ends up being more about masculinity (and women trying to cope with masculinity) than anything else. Which is fine and possibly necessary for Jia’s development. It might be Jia’s best screenplay, and the animated cutaways that at the time I thought were a bit cutesy now appear prophetic.

Key music: When I watched this in 2005, the ”Jimmy Jimmy Aaja Aaja” dance in front of the Taj Mahal didn’t make any special impression amidst all the other ersatzness. (When M.I.A.’s Kala came out a friend said her “Jimmy” didn’t add anything to the original, but of course she added… ersatzness!) But the most moving musical moment—aside from the lift from Tokyo Story, which is just cheating—is when Tao and Anna, lacking a common language, sing “Ulan Bator” (“the most distance place in the entire world”—Jia), a Mongolian song from 1985 that’s become a “Hallelujah”-like standard on Chinese TV shows, in wildly diverging translations. The free remake above is by Ai Weiwei’s buddy Zuoxiao Zuzhou.

Grade: CLASSIC

Still Life (2006)

Jia knew a once-in-a-lifetime chance to film destruction when he saw it. The footage perhaps inevitably recalls Edward Burtynsky’s photos of China and the Three Gorges project in particular; Jia’s obvious comparative advantage is that it’s much easier for him to contextualize the position of the demolition in the lives of the people of Fengjie.

Key music: The sweaty bald rocker sings Julie Sue’s “Any Empty Wine Bottles for Sale?”, the theme to the Taiwanese movie Papa, Can You Hear Me Sing. Wikipedia sez that one’s about a father and daughter trying to reconnect after their neighborhood is forcibly demolished OH I SEE WHAT YOU’RE DOING HERE JIA.

Grade: GREAT

24 City (2008)

This was the only one from Platform onwards I hadn’t previously seen. The mix of documentary and fiction is (deliberately?) awkward—even if you’re face-blind, most of the fiction sections just seem made up (though for all I know they could’ve been taken from real case studies.) It doesn’t matter much: Jia’s as great at composition as ever (this time he goes heavy on diagonals), the real stuff is simple and moving, and the acting holds the real together.

Key music: 24 City does the documentary thing of following an interview with music that connects to the interview. So a former factory worker nicknamed Little Flower for her resemblance to a 1979 movie character stands stoically while a movie clip and the theme (“Sister Looking for Brother with Tears in Her Eyes”) play. Hey, she does look like Joan Chen!

Grade: EXCELLENT

A Touch of Sin (2013)

Jia goes widescreen, and not just literally. It feels more Westernized than his previous work in its violence and the identification of the roots of that violence in Actually Existing Capitalism, a bonanza to everyone who has a file drawer full of Come Dressed as the Sick Soul of [FILL IN BLANK] essays. In that respect, the movie gets a lot better as it goes along: the Dongguan chapter, which gets beyond the pathologies of mere individuals, is Jia’s most brutal half hour.

Key music: This one cuts back on the music (for the worse imo) besides some Chinese opera. I know nothing about Chinese operas, but apparently Yu Tang Chun (which Zhao Tao’s character sees a bit of at the end) is one of the famous ones: concubine is put on trial for murder of her lord; melodrama ensues.

Grade: EXCELLENT

Mountains May Depart (2015)

This is the only one I’d seen that I didn’t rewatch, since it hasn’t been that long and I doubt my attitude towards the Australian acting has changed. I shouldn’t overstate things: it’s still a good movie (or two-thirds of one), and 21st century Chinese emigration to English-speaking countries is a hugely undercovered topic that the movie has at least something to say about.

Key music: As an oblivious Westerner, I finally realized how great Jia’s use of music was thanks to the heavy-handed but highly effective use of the Pet Shop Boys’ “Go West” as a framing device. The PSB didn’t change much about the structure of the Village Peoples’ original: they just let history do all the work of adding weight to the song, and oh duh that’s also what Jia’s been doing his entire career.

Grade: PRETTY GOOD

Ash Is Purest White (2018)

A return: to Datong in 2001, to Zhao Tao’s yellow shirt from 2006, to the choice between criminality and capitalism which ultimately might not matter much anyway. It’s still much more conventional than anything Jia did in the 2000s, but it has Zhao’s best performance by far, and thanks to that it’s a lot more subtle about relationships than it might seem on paper.

Key music: The “YMCA” scene (complete with dance untethered to the Roman alphabet) is, like the rest of the movie, a clear improvement on Mountains May Depart. Beyond that, the first section makes heavy use of “Qian Zui Yi Sheng” (something like “semidrunk life”), Sally Yeh’s theme for John Woo’s The Killer. It’s another of Jia’s repetitions—he’s used Yeh’s music since Xiao Wu—and at this point has a plus ça change quality.

Grade: GREAT

Hey, she does look like Joan Chen!