PICKPOCKET FILMS MOVIE
PICKPOCKET FILMS TV
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Triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. IFC Center does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially

PICKPOCKET FILMS MOVIE

Ultimately inexplicable, this concentrated, elliptical, economical movie is an experience that never loses its strangeness.” – J. These unstoppable blank-faced thieves descend like a plague upon the world. In the movie’s most elaborate scene, the antihero and his cohorts create an assembly line of theft at the Gare de Lyon. The film straightforwardly chronicles the life of a petty thief. The city is inhabited by angels-fallen and otherwise. One of Bressons most admired works, Pickpocket is a perfect distillation of his. There’s something almost medieval about it. “Indeed, PICKPOCKET might be described as a solemn carnival of souls. Bresson refers to this method as cinematography, opposing it to ‘the terrible habit of theater.’ (‘The noises must become music,’ he wrote in his notebooks.) His mise-en-scéne is as understated as his montage is aggressive-creating performances out of reaction shots, using sound to signify offscreen events. Employing few establishing shots and little camera movement, Bresson distills narrative down to a particular essence of looks, gestures, and precisely placed audio effects. “PICKPOCKET was inspired by Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, but all incidental anecdote and psychology has been stripped away. In the film’s final scenes, society prevails.Friday, March 12 - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 Significantly, his single moment of liberation occurs when he finds himself alone in an empty public bath. Remarkable for a movie made entirely with nonactors, “Xiao Wu” thrives on extended scenes of personal interaction - Xiao Wu with his former friend, his parents, the police and, mainly, the diffidently wooed Mei-Mei.

PICKPOCKET FILMS TV

Anticipating Jia’s use of science fiction elements in his later, naturalistic films, TV subtly mediates crucial aspects of Xiao Wu’s life.) (Technology is part of the movie’s subtext. And each purchase, in its way, promotes his undoing. A trio of young, aspiring thieves learns what it takes to be successful pickpockets from a master in the arts of trickery and deception. Mei-Mei is sufficiently impressed to encourage him to buy a beeper so she can alert him when she’s free. Asked by the karaoke hostess, Mei-Mei, whom he ambivalently courts, what he does for a living, he tells her that he’s “a craftsman who earns his money with his hands.” The pickpocket is less a product of the new China than an antisocial element who fails to modernize. Xiao Wu is pointedly uninvited to the wedding and constitutionally unable to move on from his criminal life. News reaches Xiao Wu that his former partner in crime, now a legitimate businessman trafficking in hostess bars and wholesale cigarettes, is about to marry.

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As local TV welcomes “the return of Hong Kong,” sleepy, half-urbanized Fenyang has begun to offer the fruits of the free market - karaoke, beauty salons, cheap sound systems. The titular character, played by Wang Hongwei, is introduced while waiting for a bus once aboard, he beats the fare with the smirking claim he is a policeman, then casually picks the pocket of the passenger beside him.Īn unlikely tough guy - indeed, something of a loser with thick Woody Allen glasses and a cigarette-lighter that plays a few bars of “Für Elise” - Xiao Wu has his act down. Observational, mainly in medium shot and almost plotless, “Xiao Wu” has a documentary quality. I left out the message saying that this movie is not meant to be a thriller prior to this scene but that just makes these scenes more impactful. CCTV footage reveals Masons face and the French police tag him as a terrorist threat. A few seconds later it explodes, killing four people. Not realizing the toy contains a timed bomb, he tosses it aside on a busy street.

The title character is an aimless, alienated pickpocket - described in a New York Times review as “a nondescript young man in a shabby city who practices his trade without remorse, compassion or evident fear although he is known to the police.” Some critics were reminded of Robert Bresson, whose 1959 “Pickpocket” is a masterpiece of elliptical cinema. Michael Mason, a pickpocket living in Paris, steals a bag with a teddy bear in it. “Xiao Wu” is set in Jia’s hometown in central China, Fenyang.

That movie, revived by Film at Lincoln Center in a new 4K restoration, is both downbeat and transcendent. Made for a pittance with nonprofessional actors, officially unapproved in China and first shown in the United States in 1999, Jia Zhangke’s debut feature “Xiao Wu” depicted a deadbeat Chinese protagonist and a backwater milieu few Westerners had ever seen.

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