70/100
Second viewing, last seen at MoMA in 2001. Here’s where maintaining a film log comes in handy—I would’ve sworn, absent evidence to the contrary, that I’d seen and not much liked three or four of Jia’s films prior to catching up with his debut feature, which immediately became my favorite. In fact, I watched Xiao Wu just three months after being introduced to Jia via Platform, and well over a year before Unknown Pleasures premiered at Cannes 2002. He was batting .500 for me initially. (Need to revisit Platform, which I saw at NYFF in its initial 198-minute form; it’s apparently since been whittled down to a potentially less punishing 154.)
Lemme throw in ANAL-RETENTIVE TITLE CORNER unusually early. Every part of my three-item subject line is subject to debate/preference, as it happens. Jia’s name gets variably transliterated as Jia Zhangke, Jia Zhang-ke, and Jia Zhang Ke; I went with the last in this case because that’s what appears onscreen (not in subtitles), multiple times. IMDB had Xiao Wu as a 1997 film until quite recently but for some reason deleted whatever its 1997 premiere had been and now designates it as 1998 (bowing at Berlin), which okay, I’ll follow suit. And then many sources, including IMDb and Letterboxd, use the English-language title Pickpocket, as if there weren’t already a canonical classic by that name. I prefer Xiao Wu not just because it appears onscreen (again, not a subtitle), immediately beneath what I assume are the corresponding Chinese characters, but because this film, uniquely among Jia’s oeuvre, genuinely focuses on one specific individual, without subsuming that person’s identity into a broad analysis of China’s rapid 21st-century mutation. Toward the end of Xiao Wu, there’s a brief exchange of dialogue between two minor characters that beautifully synopsizes the Jia Project: Someone tells a dude whose shop has been purchased and closed by authorities, and who’s busily packing his inventory onto a cart, “If the old doesn’t go, the new won’t come.” “One thing’s for sure,” replies the former shopkeeper. “The old is going. But where is the new?” Every feature that Jia has made since pounds that note for two hours and change.
Xiao Wu, bless its heart, touches on Whither China? only glancingly. Most of the film’s hilariously lethargic energy has been expended upon the title character, played by Wang Hongwei with an endearing mix of punk attitude and aimlessness. Initially, the dynamic’s an intriguing reversal of crime movies’ hoariest dynamic, the struggle to go straight—here, it’s Xiao Wu’s best friend and former fellow pickpocket who’s moved into ostensibly legitimate business, though Xiao Wu (btw I use both names every time because neither seems to be his surname, full name Liang Xiao Wu I believe) insists that importing foreign cigarettes and running karaoke bars are just marginally more respectable ways of ripping people off. In any case, he deeply resents not having been invited to his buddy’s impending wedding and winds up sulking alongside a karaoke hostess, Mei Mei, who eventually becomes his girlfriend. And that’s about it, narrative-wise, apart from the predictably dispiriting end of that relationship and the equally inevitable upshot of a local crackdown on petty crimes. But rather than be lectured about the evils of globalization (The World appeals to me more than do most of Jia’s later efforts because that lecture at least takes a visually absurdist form), we just watch this goofy loser passive-aggressively guilt-trip his ex-friend with a wedding gift (cash wrapped in festive red paper), or half-atone for his sins by mailing victims’ ID cards to the police station, or attempt to restore his dignity by randomly intimidating younger pickpockets on the street, or stubbornly refuse to sing a duet with his lady friend at the karaoke bar (but then later belt the same tune alone at a bathhouse). This is a Jia joint with a recurring gag, involving someone’s cigarette lighter that tinnily plays “Für Elise” when its flame is lit—I laughed aloud at that bit twice, which is likely twice more than in Jia’s last half-dozen films put together.
Mostly, though, it’s just a pleasure to spend time with Xiao Wu himself. As much as I admire Zhao Tao, she’s never been given the opportunity to dig into a character as deeply as Wang does with this ne’er-do-well, whose problems are (as is my strong dramatic preference) fundamentally self-inflicted, not imposed upon him by societal changes he can’t understand or adapt to. It’s not as if flooding Xiao Wu’s hometown to build the Three Gorges Dam made it impossible for him to steal wallets, or incapable of doing something other than steal wallets. The more we observe his behavior, the clearer and more drily poignant his dilemma becomes; you can see it in what he does with the ring he buys Mei Mei, and in how he reacts to its final destination. The extended “refusing to sing” arc alone—Xiao Wu making a false complaint to the karaoke manager, claiming Mei Mei wouldn’t sing; performing his shower rendition in the bathhouse; agreeing to sing for Mei Mei in her bedroom when she’s sick, telling her to close her eyes because he’s embarrassed, and then playing “Für Elise” on the stolen cigarette lighter; finally doing the duet—achieves more emotional weight than Jia usually bothers with. This is a filmmaker I might have loved. Alas, it’s not the filmmaker he chose to become.