Platform on DVD (2000)

A customer from yorkshire UK , 27/05/2005

A dismal side to life in China, thats what this Film portrays, but in a way if watched to the end is an education. However the film did lack the Bite needed to draw in an Audience, and I feel this could have been done without losing touch of the real world just by choosing its characters more carefully and it could have been better directed.Ok if you enjoy long drawn out films of a depressive nature. Some are good, some are poor, this lacked emotion.

  2 out of 2 people found this review helpful

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Rob Brown from London, UK [Highly rated reviewer] , 23/11/2004

Platform opens with a bizarre introduction where the theatrical troupe that the film centers on is shown performing on stage. They mime the arrival of a noisy steam train as part of a performance to an excited audience. Scuffling along the stage atop chairs, the sound of their voices mimicking the engine then merges intoxicatingly with the next scene: the troupe returning home via minibus. Various characters are referred to in this vignette, the names tossed around in fast jokey dialogue. It's difficult not to warm to these unknown people almost instantly. As the bus drives off into the night, the film begins.

The introduction is all but unintelligible, but pulled off with enough panache to serve as a beautiful scene-setter. From then on, though, the film continues a stream of fast-paced vignettes as the director paints the town the performers inhabit. Now, a similar style is used in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction where banality becomes absorbing through a energetic, pulpy dialogue. Here, though, Platform lacks the bite needed to draw the viewer in. Instead we're left with true banality, as undeveloped characters wander aimlessly around unattractive sets. Lack of coherence between scenes and a languid narrative development begin to mar what could have been an interesting drama.

Instead, as Platform crawls along it's difficult not to become quickly dissinterested. There seems to be little message beneath the story, simply a tale of woe for all concerned. Attratively enough composed, but with little thought to pacing or script.

I switched off after 2 hours, and can't say I'd recommend the film to anyone.

  1 out of 1 person found this review helpful

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A customer from uk , 12/04/2006

This film gives an insight to life inChina off the tourist trail. Dirty and hard. Some may find it a bit slow but it mprobably falls into the edu/drama dept. If you are into things Chinese watch it

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Cato , 26/10/2006

A rather slow moving and long film about coming of age in 1980s China. The rather nerdish hero of the piece is a chain-smoking bespectacled youth who fronts a Maoist band at the beginning of the decade, but who discovers the power of rock music in the more liberal years that follow. It doesn't seem to help him much though, as he ends up in a similar position to that which he would have reached if Maoism had remained the repressive ethos it had been. I'm afraid to say that I found the film rather boring, in that everything was so understated and there was no real sense of continuity in the action - there probably were hints that Chinaphiles would have got, but it was hard going for us westerners brought up on more explicit stories in our films. The cinematography concentrated on some exceedingly drab urban surroundings, with occasional poetic shots of evening skies, and there were very few close-ups of any of the actors. Quite hard going in fact.

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A customer from yorkshire UK , 27/05/2005

A dismal side to life in China, thats what this Film portrays, but in a way if watched to the end is an education. However the film did lack the Bite needed to draw in an Audience, and I feel this could have been done without losing touch of the real world just by choosing its characters more carefully and it could have been better directed.Ok if you enjoy long drawn out films of a depressive nature. Some are good, some are poor, this lacked emotion.

  2 out of 2 people found this review helpful

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A customer from uk , 12/04/2006

This film gives an insight to life inChina off the tourist trail. Dirty and hard. Some may find it a bit slow but it mprobably falls into the edu/drama dept. If you are into things Chinese watch it

Read all highest rated reviews