Film: 24 City
Release date: 27th September 2010
Certificate: U
Running time: 107 mins
Director: Zhangke Jia
Starring: Jianbin Chen, Joan Chen, Liping Lu, Tao Zhao
Genre: Drama/Documentary
Studio: Drakes Avenue
Format: DVD
Country: China/Hong Kong/Japan
Part documentary, part fiction; 24 City gained international recognition when it was nominated for the Golden Palm at Cannes in 2008. Jia Zhangke mixes interview with short fictional scenes to tell his story of commercialism in modern day China.
24 City takes place in the city of Chengdu, where the state owned Factory 420 has been sold to a private company who plan on turning the site into a luxury apartment complex, which will be called 24 City.
The film centres on five interviews with three generations of people for whom the factory has played a huge part in their lives, serving not only as the place where they worked, but where they lived, were educated, got married and raised families respectively.
Interspersed with these interviews are four short fictional scenes (still filmed in the documentary format), which show characters either working in the factory in its final days of production, interacting with each other in the living areas around the factory, or looking around the desolated remains of the building before it is razed to the ground to make way for the apartment block…
Through both of these techniques we learn a great deal about how the factory has affected the lives of those who lived and worked in it, and how it will be missed by many.
The trickiest thing about making a documentary film with a subject matter that is specific to one community living in one city in China is to make it engaging to those watching to whom the issue is not pertinent. This is something that Jia Zhangke addresses from the very opening of 24 City, in which we witness the factory in production, before seeing the ceremony in which ownership of the factory is handed over. So beautiful and powerful is the music and Zhangke’s framing of each shot that, even before we reach the first of the interviews (the emotional core of the film), it is clear that we are dealing with the end of an important era for both the factory workers and their families, and for Chinese industrialism as a whole. From this, we are drawn into the story of these ordinary people, many of whom have lived extraordinary lives, and for all of whom Factory 420 has played a huge part in their lives.
The interviews themselves are carefully selected to give a broad scope on the kinds of people who have lived and worked at the factory over the years, and also to show the way the factory has affected people over the generations for which it has been open. The passage from older factory workers who toiled daily on the factory floors to the children of workers who have more glamorous and leisurely jobs is an indication of the way China as a whole has developed over the years, which helps to make clear why the closure of a factory in favour of an apartment complex is an inevitable part of the country’s progress. They range also in tone, as some reflect happily on their memories from the factory, such as the television presenter who realised from a young age that he was not cut out for factory work. Others are more solemn in tone and truly harrowing, such as a woman who describes the moment she was forced to leave her son behind after he had gone missing on a stop-over as she made her way by boat to Chengdu. These shifts in tone and subject matter keep the film moving along nicely and give a good indication of the huge scope of different stories that have taken place in relation to the factory.
One drawback of the film is that it is, at times, not as concise and to the point as it should be. For example, we are afforded long shots of people looking into the camera, which last for a surprisingly long amount of time, and occur a little too frequently. Zhangke is trying here to make the film seem personal by forcing us to confront the people who will be affected by the factory’s closure face to face, but the interviews are affective enough that there is no need to artificially create an empathy that, for the majority of viewers, will occur naturally. The scenes in between interviews are far more effective when we see the contrast between the factory in full production and its barren, empty hallways and shattered windows in the days before it is brought down. Through what we have learned in the interviews, there is a real feeling in these shots of the history that has taken place in the factory, and each shot is carefully selected in order to bring out the strongest possible response from the viewer.
Wonderfully shot, engaging and deeply affecting, 24 City ticks all the right boxes for documentary film making. While Jia Zhangke is, on occasion, guilty of trying to force us into an emotional response, he more often than not gets it right in terms of tone and presentation, providing us with documentary which is both entertaining and interesting. PK
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