Beijing Taxi: This City Portrait Leaves a Few Things Out

Three Waters Prods.

The windshield view of a changing city.

Details

Runs at Northwest Film Forum, Sat., June 11–Thurs., June 16. Not rated. 78 minutes.

Related Content

• SIFF: Week 1 Picks & Pans
  May 16, 2012
• Gary Locke Enters the Fray Over Blind Chinese Dissident Chen Guangcheng
  May 3, 2012
• Urbanized: Part Three of Gary Hustwit's Design Trilogy
  January 4, 2012
• Karaoke Korrespondent Learns From His Elders at Shay's Restaurant on Aurora
  April 27, 2012
• Justin Solondz, Held Naked and Behind Glass in a Chinese Prison, Proves Gary Locke's Point
  March 16, 2012

More About

• Beijing
• Miao Wang
• Wei Caixia
• Government and Politics
• Communism

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

You know the place: a Neorealist set populated by the young, restless, and dazed of all ages, all living with the omnipresent but hard-to-grasp specter of kitschy/deadly communism yet steamrolling into the ruthless capitalist future. Yes, "China" has become a subgenre of contemporary documentary, as Beijing Taxi helps to confirm. Shot on HD as the 2008 Olympics approached, Miao Wang's portrait of Beijing is partly a look at three average cab drivers—a mom who likes the job's independence, a sickly Cultural Revolution vet, a jolly, complacent fellow—and partly glossy travelogue, with skittering footage of city folk, buildings, and the odd ceremony that tilts perilously toward luxe B-roll. There's something transformative going on in the streets, no doubt, and Soviet kinetic-kino pioneer Dziga Vertov might have liked the film's ethos of a nation on the move. But, especially with Chinese pop smoothing the way, Wang's letter from Beijing feels too breezy and light on fresh insight. The highlight is the crop-cut woman of the group, Wei Caixia, resoundingly vivid in her mix of ambivalence and confidence and worth her own film. Why not this one?