Platform

Revisiting Jia Zhang ke's Platform, the film seems to demonstrate how intricate the passage of time is, and delves into the intangible elements that are often overlooked in historical films.  Events don't make retelling history important, it is the challenge of evoking what it felt like to live in a different time that is central in this film.  Jia shows us how time moved in the 80's in rural China, and how it moved differently as time progressed.  But this film isn't just concerned with the flow of time, it is also concerned with what it felt like, what it looked like.  The textures of the setting are essential to their compositions, it isn't about recreating costumes from the period as the key to authenticit, instead, Jia focuses on things like the changing quality of light and how people occupy space differently as times change.  The 'real' history of the era is bubbling through the lives of the characters all of the time, but the way that the film is shot lets us see experience and texture as well as context.