Watch Platform For Free

Touches You

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Blistering performances.

Platform, a film by Jia ZhangKe, is about political, economic, and social change in China during the 1980s and the effect it has on four young performers in a provincial performance troupe. Set in Fenyang, a small town west of Beijing, Platform begins after the Chinese Cultural Revolution has run its course with the dramatization of Maoist orthodoxy by the Peasant Cultural Group. As the 80s progress, Jia shows the changes that led China away from Mao-inspired collectivism to the influence of Western ideas under Deng Xiaoping. Color TVs replace black and white and popular music videos appear on TV. By the end of the decade, the performance troupe has reconfigured themselves as the All-Stars Rock 'n' Breakdance Electronic Band, offering Western-oriented pop music. They perform in the same towns but now use electric guitars and the girls wear sparkly outfits. The performers -- accordion player Cui Mingliang (Wang Hongwei), his girl friend, singer Yin Ruijuan (Zhao Tao), her best friend, Zhong Ping (Yang Tianyi), and Zhong's boyfriend Zhang Jun (Liang Jingdong) all adopt new fashions. The boys wear bell-bottom trousers, the girls get perms, and the band delivers the latest pop disco music. The boys are sullen, however, and their romances with Zhong and Ruijuan seem lethargic. Zhong Pin becomes pregnant by Jun and has an abortion after Jun is arrested for having sex out of wedlock. They smoke cigarettes, go to the movies, and become enmeshed in petty squabbles -- all seemingly to no end, as their personal happiness remains elusive. In one scene that underscores their loneliness, the female dancers of the band stand alone looking desolate as they perform on the back of a truck while uninterested motorists drive past without noticing. Their lives that started out so promising seem to deliver very little. Toward the end, the All-Star Band returns to Fenyang, and Cui Mingliang is reunited with Ruijuan, who has become a tax collector. Platform takes its title from a popular 1980s Chinese pop song that includes the line "We are waiting, our whole hearts are waiting forever". As in the film "Unknown Pleasures" by Jia, the youngsters find themselves doing a lot of waiting. Jia captures this desultory mood but after two and half-hours the grim tone becomes oppressive. Platform is an "important" film and a realistic depiction of a turning point in Chinese history, yet I found the characters to be poorly defined and the film did not come alive as an experience.

80's is a unforgotten age of chinese,compare with "xiao wu"(director's last movie),i prefer Zhantai.It is all about 80's,its music,its live,and of courses,the people who live in that age.those 10 years,is a period of great change happened in China.With reform&open,many things changed,the life changed eventually,and something we lost also.Being a chinese,i am lucky for living through that decent.and had seen the great improvement in China,but at the same time,we lost sth.that worth to miss. And i doubt why it is a french movie,though i know it is the fund from france.but it is totally chinese,totally made by chinese,and all about our history and our individual in the age. All above,it is excellent.

This movie is truly boring. It was banned in Chinese cinema and i can see why. It's not because it's critical of the communist regime but simply because the movie is of such low quality. I would never want to pay money to watch this. I love movies from Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou and i am disappointed such a poor movie could come out of China. It totally seems to ignore the audience and the director seems to have made the movie for himself. The shots of a person standing there doing nothing for up to a minute are hilarious and there's plenty of them. The cinematography and video quality are unbelievably bad. I looked this film up on the Net and it seems like people actually like this film. The only explanation i have for this is that some film buffs think that if a film is not in English it is automatically good. I can't see any reason why people would like this. this is not an art film it's of waste of celluloid.(That's if they actually shot it on film , which they didn't)

I am from Argentina, so is difficult to me to express, but the film is a beautiful master piece about the history of China. The view of a group of a cultural actors is perfect, because they first work as actors that like Mao, but then they make breakdance...