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World, The

Universal acclaim
Based on 23 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 4 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Foreign
Written by: Zhang Ke Jia
Directed by: Zhang Ke Jia
Release Date:
Theatrical: July 1, 2005
DVD: February 14, 2006
Running Time: 143 minutes, Color
Origin: China / Japan / France
Language(s): Mandarin (with English subtitles)
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Taisheng Chen, Zhong-wei Jiang, Jue Jing, Yi-qun Wang, and Tao Zhao
Acclaimed Chinese director Jia Zhangke casts a compassionate eye on the daily loves, friendships and desperate dreams of the twenty-somethings from China’s remote Provinces who come to live and work at Beijing’s World Park. (Zeitgeist Films)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Platform Still Life Unknown Pleasure
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
This is a brilliant, if challenging, film.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
A film of wonderful looseness and innovation. Set free to film fakes, the director is the real thing.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
With rich irony, The World juxtaposes the teasing, grand images of the outside world's wonders with the insular community and the mundane lives of the park employees.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
A movie with the visual expanse of a John Ford western and the ensemble grandeur and long takes of a Robert Altman picture. The movie is definitely Chinese in content, but it exudes American style and spirit.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
The title of Jia Zhang-ke's 2004 masterpiece, The World -- a film that's hilarious and upsetting, epic and dystopian -- is an ironic pun and a metaphor.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle G. Allen Johnson
A heartbreaking, beautiful movie that gains strength from its deep characterizations.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
The comic, tragic and monumentally beautiful new film by writer-director Jia Zhangke (Platform).
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman
It's a magnificent film – thoughtful but not distant, aesthetically and technically sophisticated but staged with restraint and delicacy.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
The director is becoming a master of blending the political and the personal with eloquence and deceptive lightness.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
Jia's compassion for the drifting souls struggling to create a life for themselves in such a transitory existence makes the metaphor resonant.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Dennis Lim
On a first viewing, the movie seemed a dilution of the formal strategies Jia had perfected-at once less dispassionate and less empathetic. After a repeat viewing, it still strikes me as Jia's fourth-best film (that it's one of the year's best says plenty about the level at which he's working), but it's more apparent that The Worl d's muffled emotional impact should be understood as a function of its setting.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
Maverick Chinese director Jia Zhangke examines the rapidly changing face of China as its economy edges further toward a modified form of market capitalism with yet another complex, multicharacter masterpiece.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
If a movie can be stark and rapturous at the same time, this is that movie.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Andrew Sun
It's a splendid microcosm of contemporary China's aspirations and shortcomings.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The movie is long and slow. Either you will fall into its rhythm, or you will grow restless.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
It's a fine film, full of small epiphanies.
Variety David Rooney
While the film feels overlong at two hours 20 minutes, there's a seductive stillness to its enveloping mood.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Loosely constructed, The World drifts along pleasantly for much of its two-and-a-half-hour running time. Mr. Jia has a terrific eye and an almost sculptural sense of film space (especially in close quarters), and he brings texture and density to even the most nondescript rooms.
Read Full Review >New York Post V.A. Musetto
Jia's message is that globalization has failed to help the Chinese masses. We hear you, dude, but did you really need 143 minutes to get your point across?
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The World has a pokey pace, but it presents a uniquely powerful look at the new big kid in the global economy.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray
The World's dull weave of frustrated romances and worker exploitation is far too obvious, and Jia can only relieve the tedium so many times.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Stina Chyn
One of the oddest and surely the longest cinematic experiences you may ever encounter.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 9.0 (out of 10) based on 4 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Ziv S gave it a9:
Behind the scenes look at the lives of 20-30 year olds in China all taking place inside a giant theme park. That was enough to get me to watch, and I'm glad I did.
