Patience... that's what's needed. And then more patience. Jia Zhang-ke isn't in a hurry. He's got 10 years of Maoism to cover, from 1979 to '89, in a dusty provincial town in China where idle moments (plenty of them) are filled with speculation about where Inner Mongolia may be - obviously near Outer Mongolia, but it might be on the Moon for all Fengyang's youth and elders know.
Hortatory songs and the occasional police announcement for "wanted" backsliders continually rattle out over the public address system. The choral group's concert piece is an ensemble impression of a southward-bound train whoo-whooing toward Mao's illustrious birthplace.
The seasons alone have tempo: in winter you shovel the snow, in summer you watch the train go by. But gradually Western cultural influences steal in, along with love songs by Teresa Teng, seductive siren of "Treasure Island", on the illicit radio broadcasts from Taiwan. Bell-bottom pants are an early pace-setter, good for the sin of just lounging around, not so hot for hard work; then foreign translations, even if La Dame aux Camelias is interpreted as the exploitation of a lady by a corrupt capitalist society.
In the schoolroom, a pupil's new hairdo sparks a reference to flamenco dancing - and suddenly, in the only vivid flash of colour in a grey film, like a meteorite from another planet, she is doing the proud Carmen in front of the class. In the land where One Child Only is the diktat, a boy gets rebuked for singing a randy song about having "eight or nine wives ... hordes of kids" but then a girl vociferously resists abortion. And when electricity is brought to town, can the old order last once light is let into the commune and they can all eat in their own homes?
Change is a long time a-coming to a place much like the film-maker's own home town, where the empty day, filled with small doings and routine things, becomes the form and content of his heavily autobiographical movie.
We seem to be looking at cultural history through the wrong end of the telescope, minor and distant. It's a shock when someone refers to "the Iron Lady" to realise that even here, in this dump, Mrs Thatcher was revered.
At the end, you could be pardoned for believing little has changed. Yes, the patriotic choir has become a rock-and-break dance electronic band. But freedom breeds its own bureaucracy of vested interests. The last shot of the girl cradling a child in her arms while her once rebellious boyfriend turns into a couch potato isn't reassuring about the adoption of Western "values". It's possible that Jia Zhang-ke is not a very good director: his compositions are ugly, his favourite camera style is a long-shot, which prevents empathetic involvement in the happenings and inhabitants. It's also possible that he wants it this way, wishes us to share the boredom. If so, he succeeds.
David Hockney, once asked if he'd like to go to China, replied: "If I could come back the same afternoon." Platform gives us all that chance.
Platform
Cert: 15
