MCLC: Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry review

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kevin lee <kevin at dgeneratefilms.com>
Subject: Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry review
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Source: dGenerate Films:
http://dgeneratefilms.com/critical-essays/review-ai-weiwei-never-sorry/

Review: Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
By Maya Eva Gunst Rudolph

The documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, which was directed by Alison
Klayman and won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Prize for Spirit of
Defiance at this year¹s Sundance Film Festival, is a story about an
artist and filmmaker, about a tug-of-war between an activist and his
government, and a portrait of modern China‹but it¹s also a story about
cats. In the film¹s opening sequence, Ai, whose propensity to speak in
metaphor is evident throughout the film, discusses the many cats he
keeps milling around his home and studio. ³One cat out of forty has
learned to open the door,² he reports, remarking that if that one cat
hadn¹t succeeded in opening the door, no one would even know that cats
were even capable of opening doors. A charming moment later we see
this apparently exceptional cat leap up, open the studio door, and
free himself. Welcome to the world of Ai Weiwei.

A portrait of any artist‹even one as dynamic and controversial as Ai ­
is no simple profile to capture, but Klayman¹s obvious closeness to
her subject and the impressive roster of experts she¹s brought on
board present a thorough, well-structured chronicle of the artist¹s
life and times. For Ai, it¹s clear from the first frames that every
day exists on a public stage: in the international media, on the
government surveillance cameras surrounding his home and studios in
Beijing, and, most significantly, online. While Never Sorry is an
account of how one poet¹s son became an international figure for
artistic mega-projects and political subversion, it is also a story
that explores and champions social media in a way rarely seen on film.
>From his daily Twitter activity to the ³Cao ni ma, zuguo² (Fuck you,
motherland) internet meme that launched a thousand gasps, the internet
has played‹and continues to play‹a crucial role in Ai¹s international
reach as an artist and the practitioner of a broad political message.

The film presents a linear account of Ai¹s life, from his family¹s
years being ³re-educated² in Western China to his early artistic
career in the New York in the 1980s, the emergence of the Beijing
underground art scene from a collective post-Tiananmen depression, and
the myriad projects that have ensued over the past few decades.
Offering a contemporary narrative touchpoint is Ai¹s endeavor to
collect the names of all the children killed in the 2008 Sichuan
Earthquake. The collection of names, while affecting as a eulogy for
an unspeakable tragedy, seems to drive at the crux of Ai¹s message.
This project, like so many of his artistic crusades, is about calling
for government transparency, examining what is real vs. what is fake,
about making bold statements and damning the consequences‹no matter
how personally damaging they might be.

Clashes between Ai and the Chengdu police offer some  of the film¹s
most compelling footage, providing behind-the-scenes access to the
making of Ai Weiwei¹s Sichuan-based documentaries Hua Lian Ba Er
(Dirty Faces) and Lao Ma Ti Hua (Disturbing the Peace). The
altercations suffered during the Sichuan project come to a visual, if
not physical climax, with the documentation of a kind of digital
camera shoot-off between Klayman and Ai¹s assistants and the Chengdu
police during a heated confrontation. Ultimately, it¹s the momentum of
the Sichuan project and ensuing violent entanglements with the Chengdu
police that leads the story to the moment Ai is now best known for:
his eighty-one day disappearance and detention at the hands of Chinese
authorities in 2011.

While weaving together the various threads that compose Ai¹s story,
Klayman employs no singular narrator, but relies on the expertise of a
community of artists and scholars who are intimately acquainted with
Weiwei and his world, such as Chinese art experts Karen Smith and
Philip Tinari, New Yorker correspondent Evan Osnos, director Gu
Changwei, artist Chen Danqing, and Ai Weiwei¹s mother and his wife,
the artist Lu Qing. This assembly of de facto narrators may not
represent a broad range of Chinese or even expat attitudes but speak
to a specific intellectual culture of galleries and museums, the
spaces that house, but do not necessarily typify, the tangible pieces
of Ai¹s message.

There¹s no denying that Ai Weiwei is a film constructed for
non-Chinese audiences whose potentially cursory acquaintance with Ai¹s
story will be well-served by Klayman¹s clear, if occasionally somewhat
didactic style of reporting. There may remain, however, a few gaps in
the audience¹s understanding after the credits roll. The final credits
sequence is accompanied by a video of Ai singing along to the Cao Ni
Ma song. This Chinese internet sensation that plays on the characters
Cao Ni Ma (meaning, ostensibly, ³Grass Mud Horse²) being phonetically
identical to the characters for ³Fuck Your Mother² has come to
represent the internet¹s usefulness to in expressing
superficially-apolitical sentiments below government radar.

The meaning of this epilogue was lost on numerous members of the
Sundance audience, baffled that such a trenchant piece of
reporting‹while certainly light-hearted at moments‹would end on such a
silly-seeming note. Indeed, Ai¹s opening story about his cats is
broadly allegorical, but bears even more significant weight when one
considers Deng Xiaoping¹s famous declaration that ³it makes no
difference if a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.² So
much of Ai Weiwei¹s work and life is devoted to wading through the
black and white of ethical and political behavior, not to mention
tangling with the often indiscriminate ³mouse-catching² of the Chinese
government, to present the quote without this deeper context seems
somehow to weaken it.

Overall, the Spirit of Defiance award seems highly appropriate for
this film that promotes in its subject an undeniable spirit of
rebellion. In Ai Weiwei¹s world, there¹s the rebellion of creation in
a country fixed in an endless cycle of destruction and development,
the rebellion of using social media to subvert the restraints of local
geography, and the thrilling rebellion of an outstretched middle
finger‹a gesture of solidarity adopted by the Sundance awards ceremony
audience‹to show the world just what he¹s made of.