Zhantai (2000)

English title: Platform.

The lives of several members of a troupe of performers in China, as the country shifts from strict communism to privatization and capitalism.

The idea behind this film is similar, if memory serves me right, and this is a highly problematic assumption as a rule, to that of Bye Bye Brazil. Namely, to document, so to speak, the changes a country experiences, from the vantage points of the lives of traveling players. Normally I favor drama and action, two elements which are absent from Platform, or satire and humor, which are absent from it as well; that being said, the film worked pretty well for me. It hits the right note of realism almost invariably, and conveys the right amount of sadness which China, or certain aspects of it anyway, somehow have come to embody.

Rating: 67