Realism and Fantasy in Jia Zhangke’s The World

Abstract

Abstract One of the most prominent sixth-generation filmmakers, Jia Zhangke tells compelling stories about China’s floating population. He documents the quotidian activities of marginal people with long shots and long takes, showing their love, despair, and regrets. Scholars often consider Jia a neorealist or postsocialist realist, but close analyses of his works reveal his penchant for adding fantastical images to true-to-life stories. In his first officially released film, The World (2004), for example, Jia pairs long takes with animation and medium shots to capture the “surreal, unsettling effects” of a rapidly changing society. This generic mixture, I argue, allows the director to expose the psychologies of isolated migrant workers inhabiting multiple realities in a complex world. Jia’s willingness to investigate new ways of envisioning thoughts and emotions illustrates the corrosive effect of greed in postsocialist society and helps expand film’s formalistic commitments to the ethics of representing the real.