Venice, Toronto and NYFF preview. Useless.

"Jia Zhang-ke's latest, Useless, is an odd one," writes Darren Hughes. "Like last year's documentary, Dong, Useless is a portrait of an artist, though in this case Jia is less concerned with fashion designer Ma Ke, specifically, than with what she represents to China's leap into consumerism.... [I]t's the finer points - the visual echoes that reverberate throughout the film, the ironies and ambivalences - that make the film so fascinating."

Updated through 9/23.

Jia "uproots the very issue of individuality and personal expression and cautions against larger dehumanization of mass production," writes Patrick Z McGavin at Stop Smiling. "In weighing the physical and natural deterioration of China's resources, Useless is a revealing and frightening portrait of industrialization. It also proved that whether working in nonfiction or fiction, Jia is one of the world's essential filmmakers. He proves that against all odds, his brand of cinema must not only exist though flourish, by whatever means necessary."

"Though at times painfully slow and fairly loosely cut together (in what may have been a bit of a rush job to meet the Venice deadline [where it won the Horizons documentary prize]), Useless is however superbly shot by Jia's regular cameraman Yu Likwai (a film director in his own right) and by Jia himself," writes Dan Fainaru in Screen Daily. "Jia's film looks ultimately as a sort of impressionistic creation, which needs to be approached like a large painting whose various components are to be gazed upon at leisure."

"Useless... was one of my most anticipated films of the fest, given his triumph last year with Still Life and Dong," writes J Robert Parks. "And there are flashes of brilliance in his latest documentary.... Another six months of filming and hour of film could've created another masterpiece."

Updates, 9/23: "Like Jia's previous documentary on an artistic persona, Dong, it's tempting to read his juxtapositions as critique, but I'm not so sure that's what he has in mind," writes Doug Cummings. "Instead, he seems interested in supplying viewers with ideas and contrasts and entrusting them with the task of interpretation and judgment. It's a free flowing, organic investigation of the form and function of clothes in China today, and a work of tantalizing, lingering complexity."

"With Useless, Jia's approach to his social agenda achieves new levels of dexterity, being less obtrusive in announcing its intentions than in Unknown Pleasures or The World," writes Kevin Lee at Slant. "Light on its feet without being lightweight, Useless is a shape-shifting work that overturns expectations at every turn and leaves behind an open-ended consideration of value - of clothing, of human labor, of human life."

Posted by dwhudson at September 22, 2007 5:42 AM