24 City @ Mayfair Theatre

I'll admit - I've been really bored and trapped inside for most of the day due to rain, and now that it has stopped, I'm looking for something - ANYTHING - to get me out of the house. Since my attempt at interaction with Star/Wendy today failed horribly, I'm getting out.  I told her that her brownies were burning in the oven and then tried to make joke with her when she wanted to throw the whole pan out. Strangest thing was that  she never said a word to me throughout the entire interaction, even when I asked her a question: "Do you think any of them can be saved?" She just made a small noise and awkwardly walked away. So that happened...

And the only place close by is Mayfair Theatre, so I'm going to check out 24 City by Chinese director Jia Zhang-Ke. It's 8:29 - the movie starts in 31 minutes, and I'll let you know how it when when I get home! To tide you over until I return, here is a link to the trailer on YouTube. 

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And I'm back. It's 11:19, and I just got in. First and foremost, the Mayfair Theatre is beautiful for an old theatre from the 1930's - as I said to Court, it makes the Bloor Cinema in T.O. look like a pile of dilapidated puke in comparison. So that's a good start. 

24 City was very enjoyable, even though three people right in front of me walked out about 25 minutes into it. It was very slow and methodical in its telling of a very sad daily history of Chinese workers of various generations and the experiences they had when their aeronautical factory known as '420' moves to a city in the south-west of China called Chengdu in 1958. Recently, the factory is torn down to make way for a condo community known as '24 City' - kind of like that condo development near the SkyDome and Front Street which will have its own schools, parks, and grocery stores by the time its completed - and they interview/film people with connections to '420' and the city to better understand the impact that the factory had on their lives, their parents lives, and their children's lives. 

There are - very - rare moments of humour, but overall it's filled with very sad stories of loss and missed opportunities, harsh realities and often harsher self-realizations. I was left with a feeling at the end of every scene that something was about to happen, as if the movie was about set-ups without conclusions. And while this could have been very frustrating and unsatisfying, strangely it wasn't. The set-ups were so well done and beautifully shot, that this was often enough, even without clear or well-stated resolutions. 

Director Jia Zhang-Ke is quoted as likening the movie to the history of Chinese human and social development in the past 50 years. It's a good way of putting it. And 24 City, however slow and occasionally plodding it comes across to viewers - including those who walked out tonight - is well worth seeing.