Ai Weiwei lets the camera follow him everywhere in revealing documentary about art and activism
AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY (Alison Klayman, 2011)
Maysles Cinema
343 Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
January 21-22, $10, 7:30
212-582-6050
www.mayslesinstitute.org
aiweiweineversorry.com
“I consider myself more of a chess player,” Ai Weiwei says at the beginning of Never Sorry, Alison Klayman’s revealing documentary about the larger-than-life Chinese artist and dissident. “My opponent makes a move, I make a move. Now I’m waiting for my opponent to make the next move.” Over the last several years, Ai has become perhaps the most famous and controversial artist in the world, primarily since he participated in the design of Beijing National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, for the 2008 Summer Olympics, then denounced the Games on political grounds. Ai gives director, producer, and cinematographer Klayman, making her first full-length film, remarkable access to his personal and professional life as he gets physically abused by Chinese police, prepares to open major exhibits in Munich and London, and visits with his young son, Ai Lao, the result of a tryst with Wang Fen, an editor on his underground films. Klayman speaks with Ai Weiwei’s devoted wife, Lu Qing, an artist who publicly fought for his freedom when he disappeared in 2011; his mother, Gao Ying, who spent time in a labor camp with her dissident-poet husband, the late Ai Quing; and such fellow Chinese artists and critics as Chen Danqing, Feng Boyi, Hsieh Tehching, and Gu Changwei, who speak admiringly of Ai’s dedication to his art and his fearless search for the truth. A round man with a long, graying bear, Ai is a fascinating, complicated character, a gentle bull who openly criticizes his country because he loves it so much. He is a social media giant, making documentaries that are available for free on the internet and revolutionizing the way Twitter and the blogosphere are used. Ai risks his own freedom by demanding freedom for all, calling for government transparency before and after he is secretly arrested, not afraid of the potential repercussions. And he is also a proud cat lover — more than forty felines regularly roam around his studio — eagerly showing off one talented kitty that has a unique way of opening a door. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry shows Ai to be an honorable, supremely principled human being who has deep respect for the history of China and a fierce determination to improve its future, no matter the personal cost. Although it was not nominated for an Academy Award — it made the short list — Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry will be screening at the Maysles Cinema on January 21 and 22 as part of the institute’s “Oscar Buzz” series, with Klayman participating in a Q&A following Monday’s night screening.
In 2004-5, Christopher Trumbo’s play Trumbo: Red, White, and Blacklisted, based on the writings of his father, jailed Hollywood Ten screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo (1905-76), toured the country, a staged reading directed by Peter Askin and starring such actors as Nathan Lane, Joe Mantegna, Bill Irwin, Brian Dennehy, and F. Murray Abraham in the title role. Christopher and Askin turned the show into a documentary film, with decidedly mixed results. Although Trumbo’s letters are works of art on their own, funny and incisive, biting and cynical, with a wry, dry sense of humor that summarizes the social and political climate of the cold war era, they lose much of their power when read overdramatically onscreen by Dennehy, Josh Lucas, Paul Giamatti, and others. The camera will linger on Michael Douglas or David Strathairn as they contemplate what they have just read, adding an unnecessary sense of seriousness and importance. It is almost impossible to concentrate on Trumbo’s words as you wonder why Joan Allen was selected, whether Liam Neeson should have tried an American accent, how long and white Donald Sutherland’s hair is, or how many sly gestures Lane will make as he relates a riotous treatise on onanism. Interviews with such friends and colleagues as Manny Azenberg, Kate Lardner, Kirk Douglas, and Trumbo’s children, Christopher and Mitzi, dig deeper into the kind of man Trumbo was, along with archival footage of Trumbo on talk shows, in home movies, and telling the House Un-American Committee to go to hell. Askin tries so hard to focus on the actual words of the Oscar-winning screenwriter behind such classics as Johnny Got His Gun, Roman Holiday, Spartacus, Exodus, and Papillon that he ends up obscuring the portrait as a whole. But oh, what words they are. Trumbo will be screening January 22 at the IFC Center as part of the Tuesday-night series “Stranger than Fiction,” with Askin on hand to participate in a Q&A. The series continues through February 26 with such other documentaries as Neil Barsky’s Koch, Amy Nicholson’s Zipper: Coney Island’s Last Wild Ride, and Terence Nance’s An Oversimplification of Her Beauty.
Mikael Buch’s Let My People Go! is a charmingly wacky, unpredictable comedy that is filled with fun cinematic references, with the first-time feature-film director openly paying tribute to his many influences with an infectious glee. Nicolas Maury stars as Ruben, a French Jew living in Finland with his lover, Teemu (Jarkko Niemi). On his route one day, Ruben attempts to deliver a package to Monsieur Tilikainen (Kari Väänänen), who refuses to accept it once he sees that it contains a whole ton of money. As he suffers a heart attack on his front lawn, he wills the cash to Ruben, who initially doesn’t want it but eventually accepts it. But when he tells Teemu what happened, the incensed Teemu throws him out for having taken the money while leaving the old man dying on the grass. With nowhere else to go, Ruben returns to his crazy family in Paris, where he learns disturbing stories about his mother (Almodóvar regular Carmen Maura) and father (longtime French actor Jean-François Stévenin), his sister (Amira Casar) is in the midst of an ugly fight with her Palestinian-supporting goy husband, and his macho brother (Clément Sibony) is prepared to do whatever it takes to protect the crazy clan. Meanwhile, a distraught Ruben is offered a job in the family dry-cleaning business and gets entangled in an unfortunate sexual tug-of-war with respected lawyer and community leader Maurice Goldberg (Jean-Luc Bideau). Referencing a wide range of filmmakers including Jacques Demy, Wes Anderson, Woody Allen, Douglas Sirk, Vincente Minnelli, and Pedro Almodóvar, Buch and cowriter Christophe Honoré (Ma mère, Love Songs) have a grand old time with the oddball goings-on, which often go way too over the top or are too silly for their own good, but Maury manages to keep it all together with his sad-sack faces and physical comedy, evoking both silent movies and Hollywood musicals. Céline Bozon’s cinematography and Gwendal Bescond’s production designer, particularly in the candy-colored suburban fantasy world of Finland, continues the madness. Buch, who is still in his twenties, was born in France and raised in Taiwan and Barcelona, a diverse background echoed in the many cultural clashes and varied elements depicted in Let My People Go! The film opens January 11 at the Quad, with Buch on hand to participate in Q&As following the 7:20 shows on Friday and Saturday.