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I'm glad I didn't give up on Jia Zhangke. Several months ago, I reviewed his 2000 film Platform, which was so difficult to watch that I ended up skipping the screening of his most recent film, The World, filmed in 2004. Lucky for me, The World came back to Seattle for a one-week only run this week, and even luckier for me, I was able to work it into my schedule to catch it. The World is the kind of film Jia Zhangke should have been making all along, had he had the freedom to do so.

The Chinese director's first three films were made when he was an "underground" director; he was filming without the sanction of the Chinese government, he had to film quickly, and he never knew, when he was filming shots in public locations, if he would be shut down. His previous three films, Xiao Wu (1998), Platform, and Unknown Pleasures (2002) were all banned in China. Jia was part of a group of young filmmakers fighting for greater freedom in filmmaking, and the government finally announced new policies that loosened the chokehold a bit, allowing Jia to film his first "mainstream" Chinese film.

You might have thought, based on my SIFF reviews thus far, that all my reviews of films at this festival were going to be unabashedly positive. And they might have been, had I not decided to screen Platform, a film being shown as part of SIFF's "Emerging Masters" series, by critically lauded Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke.  I have nothing against Chinese film in general (heck, Farewell My Concubine is one of my favorite movies) or Jia Zhang-ke in particular - on the contrary, I was particularly excited about seeing both Platform and the film showing immediate after it, Jia's more recent film, The World.