In Public (film) - Relationship To Unknown Pleasures

Relationship To Unknown Pleasures

While filming In Public, Jia became interested in not only the desolate-looking buildings that had originally attracted him to the city, but to the people who inhabited them. Moreover, Jia came to realize that filming with digital video would allow him unprecedented flexibility and movement, inspiring him to begin production of Unknown Pleasures. As Jia stated at a news conference following the release of Unknown Pleasures: "At first it was the bleak and lonely buildings that attracted me. When I saw the streets filled with lonely, directionless people, I became interested in them."

One critic, however, sees the film as more of a positive depiction of humanity than seen in Unknown Pleasures, noting that the film's final scene of people dancing in a dilapidated community center (the same center that opens the later film) elicits a sense of "people persevering despite the impoverishment of their existence." Unknown Pleasures, in contrast, is "incendiary bleakness and outrage."

Stylistically, In Public fits well into the Jia oeuvre. It situates itself between Jia's Platform and Unknown Pleasures, with the long takes of the former and the same desolate locations of the latter.