Elegance Beyond Dust

Movie is a popular art form and comes under the category of popular culture. Closely related to the notion of modern industry, movie is a commodity at its birth. It follws that constructing and perfecting this audience-oriented audio-visual cultural market is of high necessity, particularly for the movies made on China's mainland since its political reform. General public is not merely an economic concept in connection with box office; it is a cultural notion in close relation to public ideology. Since the political reform in 1993, however, the movies made on China's mainland have been up against a difficulty, namely, how to capture public ideology. A discussion of contemporary public ideology, therefore, is of help for further development of China's movie industry.Learning from the Western counterpart and updating movie language are a must if China's movie industry is to seek further development."A New Generation"of directors is outright referred to as"A Generation of Imitators"or"A Generation of DC Viewers". That they draw on modern European movies, particularly on"The Auteur's Movie", is beyond debate. Of these new directors, Jia Zhangke, following naturalistic principle, zeros in on the general public at the bottom of contemporary China and for that matter his movies exhibit the features of"The Auteur's Movie". This thesis studies Jia Zhangke's movies from the perspective of"The Auteur's movie"and discusses its relationship with public ideology. It will help diagnose the real problems with movies made on China's mainland and explore the route for further development.Jia Zhangke's movies react against the legendary movies and exhibit distinctive features of"The Auteur's Movie". A review of Jia Zhangke's movies, from Xiaoshan Goes Home to The World, leads us to the conclusion that he pays close attention to the common people in ever-changing China. Proceeding from his life experience, Jia Zhangke composes an epic for the common people at the bottom of today's China. In five of his movies——Xiaoshan Goes Home, Xiaowu, Plateform, Unknown pleasures and The World——can be detected two intricately interwoven dichotomies, e·g·homestead versus foreign land and pursuit versus disappointment. His characters come back and forth between homestead and foreign land in pursuit of a distinct but slim dream, only to lose their original teenage aspirations in homestead or get lost in the foreign land. Be it the homestead or a foreign land, the harsh reality behind the stage deconstructs the dazzling variety presented before the audience, all these pointing to the dilemma of human life. Jia Zhangke's movies reacts against legendary movies in the theme as well as the lines. His movies feature natural performing by nonprofessional actors; he achieves an objective and dispassionate mood with long lens, prime lens and objective lens. He is good at prosaic narration that is intercepted at random from a natural course of life; his movies are characterized by gray hue and uproarious noise, all these displaying the naturalistic movie language style. With his distinguishing theme and language style, Jia Zhangke's movies display the features of"The Auteur's Movie", which is not only a result of Jia Zhangke's life experience and artistic taste, but also the influence of art movements in and outside China, particularly of the Western documentary movies. In face with a plethora of cultural values, trends and schools in China's movie industry, Jia Zhangke presents the stark living reality of the common people as it really is in the most detached manner. Meanwhile, Jia Zhangke's movies show his concern about the lowest strata of society, his identity with this class of people distinguishing himself from the ideology of cultural elite and restoring the actual public ideology. Although derived from the Western pop culture, contemporary Chinese pop culture possesses distinctive national characteristics in this particular era. Jia Zhangke's devotion to a truthful presentation of China's countryside as an objective observer gives his movies a sense of aloofness. Besides, he attempts to appeal to Western viewers and expand living space for Chinese movies. All these factors, together with the European movie tradition, work to alienate Jia Zhangke's movies from the general Chinese audience. In this sense, Jia Zhangke's movies struggle an existence between the western and home movie traditions as well as between the vanguard and general cultural values. As a special cultural phenomenon in today's movie industry, Jia Zhangke's movies find identity with, as well as alienate from, the general public, thus providing food for thought for China's movie industry.