The World/Shijie
Maybe I should clarify and explain my rating system for films briefly.
10=Flawless or very very ahead of its time to justify seeing it. Brilliant and life changing. Not to be missed!! Why are you still at home? Get out there and see this film Films I put into this category (but not limited to): Magnolia, Rear Window, Naked, La Dolce Vita, Ma Rose En Vie, After Life (Wandafuru Rafu), Run Lola Run, Life is Beautiful, A Patch of Blue, Dirty Pretty Things, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Breaking the Waves, The Princess Bride, The Royal Tennenbaums, Life of Brian, Being John Malkovich, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Amelie, Ed Wood, Requiem for a Dream, 21 Grams, Brazil, Tati’s Playtime, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
9=Very worth seeing and thought provoking insightful and/or may have great cinematography. Not completely flawless but will definitely inspire you to think. Films I would place in this category include: Vertigo, North by Northwest, Deconstructing Harry, I <3 Huckabees, Dogville, Pieces of April, The Hours, Lost in Translation, Edward Scissorhands, Children of the Revolution, Dear Frankie, Velvet Goldmine, Say Anything
8=Worth seeing in a theater…some bits of insight or remarkable cinematography. Films I would place in this category include: Saved!, The Dreamers, Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Young Adam, Moulin Rouge, the Pillow Book, 28 Days Later
7=Worth renting or, if you’re really big into special effects, worth seeing in a theater. Or, worth seeing in a theater for a matinee price or really worth hanging out and seeing with a bunch of people into cult classics: Army of Darkness, Evil Dead II, the most recent Batman, X Men
6=You’d be better staying at home and spending your two hours doing something more productive, like making art from Chinese fortune cookie paper slips.
5=You’d be better off spending your time reading the jokes on popsicle sticks.
4=You could watch this movie. Then again, you could also dig in the dirt for worms for the next two hours as well. It’s a tough call, really.
3=You will laugh once. Okay, maybe twice. You may be tempted to break your tv screen. You may shout at your tv screen that this film is a worthless piece of junk.
2=This is the type of film they might show you while you were burning in eternal hellfire on a 17 hour plane trip that would eventually end in sharks eating your body whole.
1=Not even worth the film it was printed on.
That being said, I give The World or Shijie an 8. It has an interesting premise. It’s set mainly in this dormitory of an amusement park in Beijing known as The World. And, believe it or not, this place really exists! No, really. The whole premise is this amusement park that takes well known landmarks in the world and makes smaller versions of them for people (I’m guessing mainly tourists) to visit. You can even go to their official website here:
http://www.ebeijing.gov.cn/Tour/ScenicSpots/t20040817_158825.htm
The only real problem with this idea is that you are reducing cities and countries to mere stereotypes that are static and unobservant of time. For example, there’s a part of this film in which one of the main characters is showing his friends “America” and he points to a scaled down version of the Twin Towers. He references 911 and how even though the Twin Towers have been destroyed, they will have them forever. It’s strange to think of history and architecture that way.
As is, in my experience, the focus of many Asian films, the characters and sparser dialogue is the main focus of the film. It’s reflective and caluclated at times. It deals with many issues of this behind the scenes park such as immigration, infidelity, living wages…and I think it does this well. It is definitely a strong point. Also interwoven into the fabric of the film is some animation that occurs during cell phone calls (a frequent symbol in the film). I found the idea of the animation and the way it was used interesting but thought the animation in and of itself was too jarring.
Overall, this is an introspective, non plot driven film that emphasizes relationships between a handful of main characters and how their lives may be effected living in a microcasm of the World.
(Now playing: Innaway: s/t)