Platform (Zhantai)

Our DVD Price: £6.99 RRP: £19.99 Save £13.00 (65%)   special offer Massive Spring Sale - over 450 DVDs from £5.99! click for details Availability This product should be despatched within 7 days.  This product will be dispatched from Guernsey. Delivery times   Earn 30 Bonus Points when you buy this product. More info

Film Description

An ambitious film that follows the lives of four friends over a turbulent 10-year period of Chinese history from 1979-1989. A vivid insight into modern China and an absorbing document of the sweeping social changes experienced by its people.

Film Information

DVD Extras

Wide Screen

Technical Details

Film Media

2 Stills

View Stills

Reviews & Articles

Share your thoughts and opinions - write a review

Review by Howard Schuman on 7th February 2003

Platform, a film by Jia ZhangKe, is about political, economic, and social change in China during the 1980s and the effect it has on four young performers in a provincial performance troupe. Set in Fenyang, a small town west of Beijing, Platform begins after the Chinese Cultural Revolution has run its course with the dramatization of Maoist orthodoxy by the Peasant Cultural Group. As the 80s progress, Jia shows the changes that led China away from Mao-inspired collectivism to the influence of Western ideas under Deng Xiaoping. By the end of the decade, the performance troupe has reconfigured themselves as the All-Stars Rock 'n' Breakdance Electronic Band, offering Western-oriented pop music. They smoke cigarettes, go to the movies, and become enmeshed in petty squabbles -- all seemingly to no end, as their personal happiness remains elusive. Platform takes its title from a popular 1980s Chinese pop song that includes the line "We are waiting, our whole hearts are waiting forever". Jia captures this desultory mood in an important film that provides a realistic depiction of a turning point in Chinese history.

View more reviews by Howard Schuman

Browse all Film Reviews

Customers who bought this also bought...

Recommendations from fellow customers

Unknown Pleasures / Xiao Wu (Pickpocket)

by Jia Zhang-ke

The Apu Trilogy

by Satyajit Ray

La Regle du Jeu

by Jean Renoir

Andrei Rublev

by Andrei Tarkovsky

Man With a Movie Camera

by Dziga Vertov

Other films by...

More films directed by Jia Zhang-ke

Unknown Pleasures

Unknown Pleasures / Xiao Wu (Pickpocket)

View more >

For questions or assistance, call us on (+44) 0844 776 0900 or email on enquiries@moviemail-online.co.uk

© 2004-2007 MovieMail, Ltd., All Rights Reserved. Find out more about MovieMail