Like
Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb’s vital This
is Not a Film, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
delights in capturing its dissident subject lounging in the company of animals.
Panahi has his iguana, which roams the Tehran high-rise to which he’s been
confined by Iranian authorities, and Ai, a target of systematic harassment by the Chinese government, has his cats, one of whose
ability to open doors mystifies him. By framing Ai in this domestic scene,
director Alison Klayman finds warmth in an artist recognized for his compulsive
refusal to comply with draconian authority – see, for instance, the series of
photos where he smashes ancient pots and strategically places his middle
finger in front of cultural landmarks. Situating Ai as a cat man might seem
precious, but Klayman is also doing sly political
work here. She’s demystifying an avowed radical, and showing (without telling)
how his oppositional stance to the government in projects like a
multi-year effort to catalogue the students who died in 2008’s Sichuan
earthquake due to shoddily constructed buildings are born not of snark but out
of a real respect for individuals, be they undocumented students or pets.
That’s
not to say there isn’t a trickster streak in Ai’s work, which collapses
distinctions between activism and art. A Chinese art critic points out that
there’s something of the hooligan to Ai’s insistence on getting in officials’
faces – sometimes literally, snatching a guard’s sunglasses to force eye
contact – and adds that it’s a sane response to a governing body founded on
hooliganism. Always engrossing, the film is at its strongest when it
tracks Ai through his Kafkaesque negotiations with a system that
refuses to acknowledge him. For a long stretch, we follow him as he files a
complaint for a head trauma sustained in Chengdu, where he was set to testify
for fellow earthquake activist Tan Zuoren before being detained and assaulted
by local police. Ai acknowledges this complaint won’t go anywhere but invites
Klayman to film him as he goes through the process anyway. The result is a documentary-within-the-documentary that champions due process when it's at its most
endangered, and subtly argues for informed protest within a broken system as
the highest form of patriotism. ***1/2/****
PROGRAMME: Special Presentations
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