mercuryadonis

A fiendishly clever idea--for a 22 minute episode of, say, The Twilight Zone. But for a feature? Nope. Not without engaging characters, decent dialogue, a plausible story and a convincingly motivated villain. Saw plays out more as an assortment of potentially cool demo scenes strung into a threadbare and implausible story. Even the money scene--the reverse bear-trap--is marred by overly frantic camera movement and editing. The director has watched too many music videos and not enough Hitchcock. Basic storytelling and film-making skills are absent as is any command of actors, dialogue, mood and logic.

Unfortunately, none of that seems to matter any more as this film has already spawned a sequel and looks well on its way to becoming a franchise. The director/writing team are rich, successful and no-doubt convinced that they are the future of edgy film-making. Too bad, cuz now they'll never have the need to master the craftmanship necessary to add style and substance to their high-concept ideas. What a waste. Jigsaw not happy.

"The World" is set in the tacky eponymous Beijing theme park and details the lives of the alienated young workers who are spiritually and physically trapped there. It's a subtle, delicate, yet powerful film with a directing style that can best described as artfully unobtrusive. The young director/writer is a master of composition, camera movement and sound. Some of the scenes unspool without editing for several minutes, the camera mostly still, sometimes moving with the action but never on the whim of the filmmaker. Sound and dialogue occur off-screen in a way that reminds one of the great Japanese director Ozu. (Indeed, one of the film's inter-titled chapters is called "Tokyo Story".

One of the best examples of this style is a grimy hotel room scene between the lead couple in which very little happens--an attempted seduction, but no sex--that is so authentic it feels almost voyeuristic to watch. In another scene, a father counts and pockets four stacks of money bestowed to him by the authorities for the accidental death of his son, his face an expressionless mask that hides more pain than could ever be shown. In an opening scene the camera tracks a female dancer running through a theatre backstage, pleading for a band aid she will never get--thus slyly presaging the untreatable tragedies that will eventually unfold.

The central characters are so alone, alienated and unable to communicate in any meaningful way--much of the dialogue is spoken into the ubiquitous cellphones--that the closest any two people come together are two woman--one Chinese, the other Russian--who don't speak a word of each other's language.

This is the best kind of social commentary a film can offer, images that show and don't tell. At times it feels plodding--especially the last half hour--some of the characters could use more development, and the animated cellphone sequences seem unnecessary and distracting. But the depiction of contemporary urban China's deepening social malaise--the result of far too rapid urbanization and unchecked Westernization--is troubling enough to make one fear the country's--and the world's--future.

The age of the machine-musical has a given us a movie made by and for robots. There is more creativity and genuine emotion in a Tae-bo infomercial than this adrenalized, aerobicized, hyperventilating monster of a flick. To be honest I could only watch about half of it before the Tylenol container beckoned. Somewhere, Bob Fosse is rolling in his grave. Let's hope Rob Marshall doesn't fashion a musical out of that.