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Recently revived at the 2020 New York Film Festival, “Xiao Wu,” also known as “The Pickpocket,” is Jia Zhangke’s 1997 directorial debut. The film, which follows the life of an apathetic criminal, finds a surprising profundity in spite of, and perhaps because of, its nihilistic tone. Jia uses unique technical elements — cacophonous sound mixing and unusual shot framing — to build a conceptually rich film that meditates on personal stagnancy in a rapidly changing world.

The film was shot in 1997 in the city of Fenyang, with opening scenes referencing the handover of Hong Kong. This tumultuous political backdrop sets up tension with the titular character, Xiao Wu (Wang Hongwei). When the city’s police department decides to crack down on crime, he, a well-known pickpocket, is instantly under suspicion. Simultaneously, Xiao Wu’s former friend, a reformed thief, refuses to invite Xiao Wu to his wedding, having moved on from his former life as a criminal. But Xiao Wu is apathetic in the face of these political and social troubles — he neither changes nor rebels. Instead, he wanders to a brothel where he finds himself falling in love with a prostitute, Mei Mei, (Hao Hongjian). The plot of the film is propelled by Xiao Wu’s listlessness and passivity. The storyline unfurls slowly and consistently as he meanders from one moment to the next; as he is shuttered from one space, he finds a next, and a next.

Shot in 16mm, the cinematography by Nelson Lik-wai Yu is stunning, providing vibrant imagery that enriches the movie’s emotional gravity. The film moves fluidly between the distinct visual environments Yu creates. Banal city life is greys and pale blues, punctuated by the constant, disorienting movement of bikes and cars. Xiao Wu’s childhood home is highly contrasted: Bright whites stand out against deep shadows, and barely any motion is perceptible on screen. The brothel, where Xiao Wu falls in love, is deep red and electric cyan, shot in long takes with the camera slowly spinning. But despite these vastly different aesthetic worlds, Jia keeps the film tonally consistent — impersonal, even neutral. The relationship between the characters and the camera is restrained. Close-ups are rarely used; thus, the emotional richness of the film comes from the environment around the characters rather than the characters themselves. What provokes empathy and emotion from the viewer is nearly entirely in the cinematography: color, camera movement, and shot framing.

But at times, the editing by Yu Xiao Ling detracts from the beauty of the film, as the editing calls attention to itself. Certain scenes jump from one vantage point to another, missing visual markers that would normally signify continuity. This disrupts the cohesion of certain scenes, taking viewers out of the world of the film. Other scenes make distracting use of cut ins and cutaways. Because the cinematography is one of the film’s strongest tools for building emotional weight, this style of editing feels off-putting and out of place.

“Xiao Wu” best captures a sense of loneliness and isolation when it focuses on the world around Xiao Wu, rather than the character himself. At times, the camera pans in slow, dizzying loops, shifting away from Xiao Wu to his surroundings, shots that make Xiao Wu seem small in comparison to the scale of the cityscapes around him. At other points, the camera does the opposite, remaining completely still. Characters shift in and out of frame as the scene plays out, the camera imposing a boundary that Xiao Wu interacts with. Certain scenes play out without him even appearing on screen. In the latter part of the film, Xiao Wu visits his hometown and an entire conversation takes place with him offscreen before the camera cuts to a shot of him sitting to the side, silent.

The sound mixing likewise emphasizes environment over character. The film barely uses a score, instead preferring a cacophony of ambient noise mixed by Yang Zhang. Background noise — the sound of a TV, wheels on a dirt road, a toddler’s cries — eclipses the characters, drowning out the already-sparse dialogue. The sounds are often amplified to feel simultaneously quotidian and surreal such as the amplified, intimate sound of an egg being peeled, or the sound of a TV show with heavy reverb. The technical elements of the film — the cinematography and the sound mixing — allow the viewer to examine Xiao Wu’s relationship to the world around him as he alternates between ignorance of it and submission to it. These surprising technical choices never drown out the individual characters, Jia uses them to create a strangely humanizing and tender effect.

At multiple points in the film, Xiao Wu stands in the background of a busy street, rendered nearly invisible behind the cacophony of sound and movement. Yet as much as he blends in, he stands out — because of his stillness. These kinds of contradictions carry the film — visibility and invisibility, aimlessness and purpose, apathy and feeling. Unlike the many meditations on loneliness that have preceded and followed it, “Xiao Wu” is not solely a meditation on Xiao Wu’s estrangement from the world. The vibrant, incarnate setting of the film, juxtaposed with the character himself, tells the story not just of a man who is alien, but also of the society that has chosen to alienate him.