Beijing Bicycle

Browsing through some of the previous comments, it seems many viewers take the movie primarily as an allegory of class clash in Beijing. While the movie does state the contrast with emphasis, it's much more interesting as a story about teens. The title translates literally to "seventeen years' bicycle."

The story is just that. Guo is a young man who earned a bicycle and promptly has it stolen. Through luck and perseverance, he finds it in the possession of Jian, a high school student. Trouble ensues.

I grew up in Taiwan, and I remember kids doing incredibly cruel things to each other. Not so much gunning down classmates but there were plenty of physical and emotional violence. This movie is a powerhouse of insight into the psyche of teenagers. Contemporary Hollywood pumps out teenage movies by the dozen each year, and most simply gloss over the amount of pain and awkwardness adolescence can bring. Beijing Bicycle, on the other hand, can serve as an instructional manual for any high-school bully wannabes on how to reduce the stammering geek next door to a shell of a man.

It's therefore understandable that the movie can be very difficult to watch at moments. Guo suffers humiliation after humiliation, and at times I wondered in frustration what it would take to get him to swing back (the ending provides some answer to that, I think). There is some humor in the movie, and Guo does have the resources to prevail occasionally. If you can stand two main characters respectively passive and oblivious, the story is an incredibly touching one about being young.

Beyond the plot that reminds me of neorealistic style, imho this is a film about the contrast between the ex-peasants and the big city. The formerly peasants who came from the rural areas are the only positive characters of the movie; the guy struggle to keep naive as he can, but ultimately the violence and the opportunism of the city catches him. A masterpiece.

A bit irritating at times and certainly not a regular fare even for those used to Asian movies. The story revolves around ideas of going up the social ladder... about how material goods can change your status, and what can happen due to greed.

The main character a peasant from the countryside finds himself in the "wild" urban enviroment and all its impersonal aggresiveness. The big city is unforgiving. The way the main characters tend to react to otherwise incredibly hard situations with silence sure is different from western standards.

Overall a beautiful movie with some very good scenes... still slow at times and could have been better 7 in 10.

Too long? Don't be absurd: there's not a single moment that could profitably have been cut. The details of Beijing life we see may or may not "develop character" or "advance the story", but they're worth watching all by themselves, and Wang only includes those details which he correctly senses are not out of place. This is a film as sturdily and artfully made as the bicycle of the title, and it's simply a pleasure - a rare pleasure, unfortunately - to see dialogue, images, music and incidental sound fitting together so nicely. The long stretches with no dialogue at all are as communicative as they need to be and anything but contrived. I probably wouldn't even have noticed them if it hadn't been for the fact that I didn't speak Mandarin and was thus relieved not to have to read subtitles.

It's amazing how much Wang manages to convey in what is, after all, a very short time (just 113 minutes). I even got a sense of why so many people were willing to align themselves with Qin (the one who either stole the bicycle from Guo or bought it from the real thief with stolen money - we're never entirely certain), even though he comes across as perhaps the least worthwhile person in the world. When his friends offer to help him retrieve the bicycle - and later on, as they try to retrieve it - they have the air of people who know they're in the wrong, who are trying to justify their mistaken decision to waste energy on the wrong person by wasting still more energy. We get a similar sense from Qin's suitor, Xiao, and even from Qin's family. We get a strong sense of the society in which all of these people live and of how the world must appeal to them.

And even though there may be no "closure" at the end - although I don't know what "closure" is and I suspect that people who use the word probably don't either - few films are quite as satisfying.

I really enjoyed watching this film for a second time recently. A story of a young peasant from the outskirts of town (Beijing) struggle against societal oppositions, finding work, keeping bike from preying thieves, and learning survival skills. Beijing is not an easy town to tame!

At times very funny! At times very violent, makes you want to turn your head in disgust. The violence is to prove a point. No good comes from it, whatsoever!

I think this film is well made. The pace is smooth. The acting is superb. I especially like the acting of the employer who hires the main character as a messenger boy. He is what you would call a prudent business man with heart!

Please take some time out of your day and watch this tense movie with moralistic themes: rich versus poor, right versus wrong, bullying versus stubbornness. A winner in my book!