Following such lines, we first meet Han Dong, the main character who once quit school, standing in front of a newspaper company at a job fair hoping to be invited for an interview but unfortunately being ignored completely because of the absence of required qualifications and experience. The existence of both him and his girlfriend Xiao Zhu is rather miserable after coming from the countryside factory to Beijing. She is residing in a shabby basement of the mannequin producing company where she is employed while he is in shared accommodation with Zhang Bo a former classmate who went there to pursue college education.
Eventually, and quite by chance, he gets an offer to do an internship at Jingcheng Shibao newspaper as a result of senior reporter Huang Jiang encountering one of his articles on a certain forum which he had upvoted some time back. Now that there is no money involved, and no guarantee that the internship will become a full-time job, there is an ambiguous case involving people who want to deny being Hepatitis B positive and the use of forged blood tests comes across Han Dong. For a period of time, however, he finds himself in between achieving success and succumbing to his ideals.
Wang Jing intricately captures and critiques the various elements of the Chinese system in her film set in the year 2003. The persistent racism along with the fact that firms required individuals to undergo medical examinations in order to hire them, even for office roles, plays the central theme, nonetheless, it is still among many themes. The film also sheds light on the tragedy of miners in a coal township and how they were treated by the businessmen and the local government.
Moreover, we can inductively infare the same through Jia Zhangke’s performance, who was the producer of the movie. There is the focus on how journalism campaigns, especially those concerning the front page, are run, along with those situated in the poorer parts of the society in Beijing, areas where people live without the appropriate papers, have their fair bit in the narrative, all of which complement the film’s great wealth history. In that sense, Huang Jiang’s character stands out of the best characters in the story. And again, everything is in the performance of Songwen Zhang, who played this part superbly.
Also, Han Dong turns out to be quite an idealistic young man who is prepared to go to the limits in order to become a reporter and maintain his moral perspective and this aspect is shown quite well because Bai-Ke is rather effective in that respect.
However, the difficulty arises when Wang Jing tries to move away from this and makes an effort to create the characters as well as their relationships out of these events. The romance of Dong with his girlfriend, say, looks like an addition more suited to the later parts of the movie since it appears completely isolated from the core story which makes Miao Miao‘s role as an absolute devotion end up clumsily. The same criticism can be levied at Dong’s relationship to Zhang Bo, on the grounds that such an important aspect of his initial disaster is only given a brief discussion, and the “speech” that is casually used to justify his change of opinion is, on both counts, unconvincing. Once again, Yang Song is unconvincing in the context of the role due to the script.
Actually, the same goes for the connection he has with the man who operates the blood “donation” business and his daughter, which is the start of what could be seen as a somewhat melodramatic side of the film, that is however present at other times in the film, and very late in the film. Further, the sequences of the pen that floats and the newspaper later on are also above all things useless, as they end the ‘clutter’ within the film. In this case, and even if everything seems to be in harmony in Laclau’s editing style dominant mid-tempo, it is necessary to emphasize that it is not without problems, for the film contains a number of scenes that were quite uncalled for.
On the one hand, however, Nelson Lik-wai Yu’s photogaphy is top notch, as he draws attention to the various shabby spots within which almost the entire action takes place but also in great artistry, as well as the general excellent coloration.
Notwithstanding the above concerns, which seem to stem rather from the writing indeed, “The Best is Yet to Come” is a film that, on the other hand , is just as real, relevant in its sociopolitical remarks and entertaining to sit through.
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