Platform

Platform is a 2000 Chinese film written and directed by Jia Zhangke. The film is set in and around the small city of Fenyang, Shanxi province, China (Jia's birthplace), from the end of the 1970s to the beginning of the 1990s. It follows a group of twenty-something performers as they face personal and societal changes. The dialogue is a mixture of local speech, mainly Jin Chinese and Mandarin. The film has been called "an epic of grassroots". It is named after a popular song about waiting at a railway platform. Platform has garnered wide acclaim from critics in the years since its release, and is often named one of the greatest films of the 2000s. Plot The film starts in 1979 in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. A theatre troupe of young adults in Fenyang performs state-approved material. The troupe includes Cui Minliang and his friends, Yin Ruijuan, Zhang Jun, and Zhong Ping. Zhang and Zhong are together. Cui asks Yin if she is his girlfriend, but she does not answer him directly. The next day, one of her friends confronts Cui to say that his talking to Yin about their relationship has caused much concern and consternation to Yin, and Cui takes note. He goes out of his way to meet with Yin again, and all she can do is recount all of the reasons that the two of them do not make a good couple. Cui is dejected by her spurning and leaves her to stand alone among the dilapidated old buildings in the courtyard where they spoke.