Author: yifeiy

Review: Dream in Silence (2020)

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Running time: 75 min

Director: Huang Xin / Bao Ye

Countries: USA, China

Genre: Documentary

Dream in Silence has all the qualities an engaging documentary should have: an immigrant story, set in NYC, about a man’s end-of-life dream, and a collision between young and old. Self-proclaimed as a dying man, the subject, Fang Sir, is a funny, sensitive, and unpredictable graybeard who is like someone out of fiction. Before he immigrated to the U.S., he was a promising director in Taiwan. After decades of being distant from creative business, he decides to remake what he calls a “western” version of his award-winning short film from 40 years ago. A dozen young Chinese filmmakers were on board to help Fang Sir fulfill his dream. However, if you think this story may be no different from the touching ones that happened in the home-renovation shows, you might want to hold that thought, because how Fang Sir’s film project started and how the shooting went through are just beyond bizarre. Fang Sir isn’t any ordinary guy. He is wacky. He has a young heart. He makes you love and hate him at the same time.

Fang Sir’s initial capital is $300 that is supposed to be used on fixing his teeth. He tries to convince his producer, whom he met while waiting in the line for the restroom, to ask Ang Lee for financial support. The only thing that crossed their paths was that Lee had won the same Golden Harvest Award as Fang Sir did 30 years ago. He joked about the possibility of getting hit by a car and then using the insurance money to make his film, but it seems odd that he often positions himself not as the point person solving problems but more like a demanding customer. People on his team seem to be mostly film school graduates and professionals in the industry. By contrast, Fang Sir is laughed at as an amateur and is not on the same page with his young teammates.

Dream in Silence follows Fang Sir and his team’s preparation and official filming. The original short film, Silence (缄默), was directed by Fang Sir and shot by Christopher Doyle in 1979. Unsatisfied with Doyle’s cinematography, Fang Sir reshot the film in 1989. The 2020 version is the second-time remake. Fang Sir is currently consulting another film crew to make his third remake because he wasn’t happy with their collaboration. It is questionable why Fang Sir is so obsessed with this one story and yet has not developed anything new to give it a new life after 40 years.

The fast-paced editing in Dream in Silence is a successful hook and makes Fang Sir’s filmmaking journey incredibly entertaining to watch. The documentary not only truthfully documents Fang Sir’s over-excitement and adorable statements, but also his insecurity as an artist, his panic moments, and self-contradiction. For better or for worse, Dream in Silence does not pity Fang Sir and does not track down the reasons behind his awkward and irresponsible behaviors. It seems to me that he relies more on the team’s help than the film crew ever needs him. Young filmmakers took it for granted that Fang Sir was lonely and much happier when they were together, but that might be too shallow of a conclusion to make. I can’t help to compare his life with the film he is remaking. Coming to the U.S. did not help him achieve his movie dream but rather became a thorn in him, for he could not stop thinking about what-ifs. The reality has poured cold water on his dream, and he gradually lost his voice.

 

Now playing at Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival till November 15.

 

 

Review: Europa, Europa (1991)

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Running time: 1h 47 min

Director: Agnieszka Holland

Countries: France, Germany, Poland

Genre: Drama, War, History

Rated R

The 27th Ann Arbor Polish Film Festival presents the recently restored version (2016) of Europa, Europa. I missed the big screen experience this year, but the stunning color and clarity impressed me from beginning to end. An adaptation of Solomon Perel’s autobiography, Europa, Europa tells the story of a Jewish boy trying to survive and at the same time trying to figure out his national, religious, and social identities during the Holocaust period. It was shot in 1989, another historically important period: the Berlin Wall fell in the same year and several communist countries in eastern Europe (Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia…) began to abandon the one-party rule. So, when the film crew was reenacting Nazi Germany history, history also unfolded before their eyes. The remarkable mixture of fiction and history in Europa, Europa can also be credited to director Agnieszka Holland’s sensitivity to historical incidents that she herself didn’t experience. It wouldn’t be too far-stretched to say that Holland’s own life trajectory left a mark on the film. Her father’s mysterious death was associated with the secret police. She studied film in Prague (FAMU) and was thrown in jail for her participation in political movements during the Prague Spring. Like Solomon, she was once an artist in exile, separated from her daughter. (More on Holland’s background; I recommend this Q&A with Holland on Europa, Europa. Her sense of humor is incredible!)

To me, the pacing feels fast and in a way parallel to the ideological polarization between Capitalism and Communism. Five minutes into the film, I already saw a brit milah, a nudity scene, and the tragic death of a girl. The storytelling is unconventional. For one thing, circumcision is an important thread in the plotline. There is a comic effect built into every turning point. Maybe absurd is a better word to describe my experience—I kind of just freeze at frightening moments, moments when Germans attacked the protagonist’s school, when his Jewish identity was exposed to his admirer, when he was pointed with a gun, etc. I can’t tell how the protagonist Solly will react. Sometimes he’s alert, but often sometimes his behavior calls attention to the fact that he’s just a teenager.

With a sense of whimsical unexpectedness, Europa, Europa is not a purely tragic story, but it’s certainly not childish neither. Holland does not fabricate victimhood and avoids any simplification of humanity. The protagonist is not a traditionally heroic figure, and the story is more about things that he has no control over happening to him. At the Russian orphanage, Solly betrays his religion and becomes a supporter of Stalinism. He is then taught to hate and to kill by the Nazis. He sees traumatic war-time cruelties and has to make moral compromises on the fly. With his friends dying in front of him, there isn’t much reason for him to anchor his identity in his near environment. Naturally, he feels guilty and hyper stressed; his complex inner feelings are expressed through his surreal dreams, where Stalin and Hitler dance in close embrace, and Hitler is indicated to be a Jew hidden in a closet.

Although Solly’s journey is jaw-dropping, he’s never been in the ghetto. His closest encounter with other Jews’ lives is when he bypasses the ghetto in a tram run by the Nazis. Similar to how Solly only has a few glimpses of the horrifying ghetto scenes, I think the film also keeps a distance from the history and nests safely in a youth’s narrative. (If you’re interested in watching authentic imageries of the Warsaw Ghetto, check out A Film Unfinished (2010))

Review: The Neurosurgeon (2020)

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Running time: 80 min

Director: Magdalena Zagała

Country: Poland

Genre: biography documentary

Our brains learn, remember, solve problems, and they are at the same time fragile, deceptive, and mysterious. The winner of Ewa Pięta Award for Best Documentary at this year’s AAPFF is The Neurosurgeon/ Neurochirurg, a film that gives an inside look at world-leading neurosurgeons’ daily work and work philosophy.

The main subjects Dr. Mirosław Zabek and Dr. Krystof Bankiewicz are two pioneers in the field of vascular microneurosurgery. Both have lots of titles and awards after their names, and most importantly, they are the experts who have cured some of the rarest brain diseases and performed surgeries that have never been done in history. Following these two legendary Polish neurosurgeons in meeting rooms and operating rooms, the film not only presents a career and working environment less familiar to the public but also showcases the process of difficult medical surgeries and a heart-to-heart talk about brain diseases and death.

 

Blending both the doctors’ and patients’ experiences, The Neurosurgeon documents five families coming to a Warsaw hospital looking for help. There aren’t many dramatic moments in The Neurosurgeon. Rather, it’s in little moments we the audience recognize fear, compassion, and love. The first case is a young father of three, who has a recurrence of a brain tumor. The camera captures him asking his wife to keep his wedding ring safe, and it is uncertain when he can put it back on. The second patient has been agonizing over her uncontrolled jerky body movements due to Parkinson’s disease. The film also introduces the audience to AADC deficit, an incurable genetic disease that affects children’s breathing, speech, and motor development. Around the world, there are about 130 children diagnosed with AADC. Two of them are in Poland and appear in this documentary. The last case is a popular Polish actor facing the risk of losing his ability to ever speak again. The camera goes into the operating room with these patients, filming neurosurgeons cut a bony opening in their skulls, conduct deep brain stimulation, and other medical procedures that are otherwise not seen by the general public. After recoveries, patients almost magically regain control over their body and are able to function more normally.

Although health impairment is a heavy topic, the tone of The Neurosurgeon is rather calm and even cheerful in the sense that it celebrates technological advancements, vibrant science communication, and the positivity to embrace uncertainty in life. There are times when a doctor has to refuse a surgery for the consideration of the patient’s life quality, or simply because there is nothing the doctor can help with. There are also times when the doctor sees the patient coming back to breath and gain a second chance to live.

Preview: Europa, Europa

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Based on writer Solomon Perel’s true story in the WWII period, Europa, Europa (1990) follows a Jewish boy’s escape from Germany’s systematic persecution and tells his miraculous survival story passing off as a Nazi. Our young protagonist, in director Agnieszka Holland’s own words, is “the toy in the hands of history.” He first experiences family separation and becomes a Russian orphanage for two years. When he encounters a Nazi troop in Russia, he poses as a German Aryan and joins the army in order to survive. This is no different from jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, as his true identity can be exposed at any moment. dir. Holland depicts Solomon’s complex wartime life and brings his burning lie about his identity into a closer examination.

Join this year’s Copernicus Lecture which features director Agnieszka Holland in conversation with U-M Professor Johannes von Moltke and Professor Benjamin Paloff: this Friday night at 7 pm, free and open to the public.

Europa, Europa is part of the 27th annual Ann Arbor Polish Film Festival’s feature film series. This year, AAPFF is going online (Nov 6 – 8) and will present a selection of jury-awarded documentaries, short films, and the latest Polish feature films.