24 City 2008 123movies

Watch: 二十四城记 2008 123movies, Full Movie Online – Change and a city in China. In Chengdu, factory 420 is being pulled down to make way for multi-story buildings with luxury flats. Scenes of factory operations, of the workforce, and of buildings stripped bare and then razed, are inter-cut with workers who were born in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s telling their stories – about the factory, which manufactured military aircraft, and about their work and their lives. A middle-aged man visits his mentor, now elderly; a woman talks of being a 19-year-old beauty there and ending up alone. The film concludes with two young people talking, each the child of workers, each relaying a story of one visit to a factory. Times change..
Plot: 24 City chronicles the dramatic closing of a once-prosperous state-owned factory in Chengdu, southwest China and its conversion into a sprawling luxury apartment complex. Three generations, eight characters : old workers, factory executives and yuppies, their stories melt into the History of China.
Smart Tags: #same_actor_plays_two_characters #storytelling #factory #china #fired_from_a_job #factory_dismantling #1980s #1970s #working_conditions #workshop #housing_project #childhood_memory #recollection #loss_of_son #loss_of_child #reference_to_chiang_kai_shek #the_internationale #jet_engine #engine #occupational_disease #joblessness

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Ratings:

	7.1/10 Votes: 2,182
	89% | RottenTomatoes
	75/100 | MetaCritic
	N/A Votes: 42 Popularity: 2.955 | TMDB

Reviews:

Living For The City
Zhang Ke Jai has(at least to me) grown substantially since “The World”, able to leave some of the melodrama behind and let his characters and the landscapes speak for themselves. “24 City” is a beautiful film, both relevant and moving in the ways “Up In The Air” wishes it were.

A factory in Chengdu, China that has been in operation for generations is being closed down to make room for a upscale high rise apartment building called “24 City” ironically named after a poem about harmony. We follow a series of interviews with former factory workers about their lives in and around the factory.Some of the interviews could have been shortened or illustrated visually instead of having us just watching talking heads speaking over silence, but that is my personal preference.

It could be argued, by not re-creating their lives Jai gives his subjects a sense of dignity, and creates an intimacy between them and the viewer that would be otherwise lost. For the most part I would agree, though in honesty, I did get anxious more than a few times during some of these discussions. Jai’s subjects at first seemed to be almost rambling inconsequentially, but as the film goes on, their statements become enmeshed in each other and the film as a whole, and intricately articulate how the factory for generations was their entire world, romantically, socially, philosophically, and culturally.

Some of the workers had their first fights there, their first loves, some moved their whole families on the promise of work, while others left their families behind, and suddenly this community which has sustained them all this time has disappeared, moved by forces beyond their control. Part of the film is documentary, but some of the interviews are “fictional” and feature actors.

I had trouble telling the difference between those who were actors and who were actual workers, but the mixture between the authentic and the dramatic only serves to highlight the contrast between the promise of worker’s solidarity and justice and the realities of changing economic priorities. Jai’s “The World” offered us the best metaphor for the globalized melancholic that I’ve yet to see, that of an amusement park masquerading as the greatest architectural achievements of humanity, while those who toil in it are increasingly alienated from any sense of “authentic” culture, themselves, and each other. That film itself, however was not as compelling as it’s ideas.

In many ways “24 City” and so I am told Jai’s similar, “Still Life” continue this series on the changing face of China, and the “real” people caught up in this global gentrification. What made me look at “24 City” as something other than just a clever polemic was a baffling scene of a girl skating to a soft, bubbly, trance like electronic song. The girl skates in circles, and the music plays and we just observe her, and the song continues, as the camera floats off looking across the city and the mammoth building rising up into the skyline. I don’t know what if any purpose this scene had to the rest of the film, but it was lovely. Equally startling were the huge crowds of workers, by the hundreds in the film’s first scenes, that are as overwhelming as the CG throngs of countless soldiers and orcs from “The Lord Of The Rings” epic battle-scapes. In those moments Zhang makes his cinematic eye, rival and better his(at least for me)binding interest in social realism.

Realism especially of the socially progressive variety is not my cup of tea (to put a borderline pathological aversion mildly), but “24 City” made, if not a believer, than a fascinated viewer out of me. If globalization has to be “hot button” of contemporary art, if there must be sad-sack post-modernist which stylistically bite the hands that feed them, if the classical Marxist themes of alienation, class, and gentrification must persist on into the next decade, we could all do worse than to see them filtered through Zhang’s warm humanism (another term I would usually avoid).

It’s not a thrill a minute, and there is no George Clooney smirking to enjoy, but “24 City” is rewarding, intimate, and oddly sensual, which few politicized movies, and even fewer documentaries, seem capable of doing these days. This is the first Jai I enjoyed, and makes me interested to visit the rest of the oeuvre.

bad DVD design, good film. i enjoyed it.
That DVD design looked as if it was about a japan military story, because their military flag looks similar.

This film is like an authentic documentary. The few famous actors appeared in it did a good job. Even though you know who they are in real life, but they acted as if they were really part of that factory.

And I loved it when Joan chen spoke shanghai dialect, it is rare for a Chinese film to use shanghai dialect. It is sort of forbidden by the Chinese communist party. If hong kong was a part of China since 1949, then there won’t be any cantonese films at all, because the CCP forces every film to be made in mandarin Chinese only.

I also liked it when Joan chen spoke her mandarin with a shanghai accent. she can speak perfect mandarin, but she did it to make her role more authentic.

Time is changing, I believe what those people said in this film really reflect what is happening to those factory workers who were laid off.

Other Information:

Original Language zh
Runtime 1 hr 52 min (112 min)
Budget 0
Revenue 0
Status Released
Rated Not Rated
Genre Documentary, Drama
Director Zhangke Jia
Writer Zhangke Jia, Yongming Zhai
Actors Jianbin Chen, Joan Chen, Liping Lü
Country China, Hong Kong, Japan
Awards 1 win & 6 nominations
Production Company N/A
Website N/A

Technical Information:

Sound Mix Dolby Digital
Aspect Ratio 1.85 : 1
Camera N/A
Laboratory N/A
Film Length N/A
Negative Format HDCAM
Cinematographic Process Digital Intermediate (2K) (master format), HDCAM SR (1080p/24) (source format)
Printed Film Format 35 mm (spherical), Digital (Digital Cinema Package DCP)