07/11/2023 - Dissident Chinese composer Wang Xilin is stripped bare in Wang Bing’s searing documentary portrait

2023 has likely been the year when many audiences have gone from Wang Bing-curious to Wang Bing-conversant – not that acclaim for the formidable Chinese documentarian was lacking previously. Yet his three-and-a-half-hour sweatshop labour study Youth (Spring) [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]’s Cannes placement certainly brought further attention to his work and reputation – the “you can’t miss this” stamp of a competitive slot, over a specialist, sidebar designation.

Also premiering at the festival was Man in Black [+see also:
trailer
film profile], whose duration just grazes 60 minutes, and which has been shown at other events across the year as a feature presentation, opening Doclisboa and playing in a career retrospective this week at IDFA. These two 2023-premiering works typify his utter filmmaking rigour and absolute engagement with China’s history of ideological upheaval from the 20th century on. They also testify to and provide working examples of unconventional approaches to non-fiction, be they the daring and confrontational repetitiveness of Youth (Spring), or the radical stylisation of this music- and monologue-based film.

With a true unity of character, theme and setting, he observes Chinese modern-classical composer Wang Xilin (whose work is not so widely known amongst aficionados of this music), in the deserted environs of Paris’s Bouffes du Nord theatre; cinematographer Caroline Champetier drapes it in muggy, chiaroscuro lighting, making it appear derelict and abandoned, when it still is indeed a functioning performance space.

Wang, for his namesake and longtime friend, conjures an awesome, feral intensity from his directorial choices. A looping opening tracking shot follows Wang Xilin as he descends from the theatre’s balcony seats towards its stage area, which is placed at direct sight lines to the empty front stalls. Shot completely nude, he performs a rhythmic dance, curving his body into a variety of submissive poses, creating an undeniable and, as we learn, accurate evocation of the physical torture he endured.

In the middle chunk, the composer sits facing the camera in one of the deserted seating aisles, and begins a monologue – with no prompt from an off-screen interviewer or voice – which feels, by its effect, delivered in one breath. It’s an archetypal story for a mainland Chinese citizen of that generation: an impoverished childhood is overcome by early ideological fervour, through joining the People’s Liberation Army as a teenager to fight in the Chinese Civil War. Then his clear place in the new Chinese collectivism becomes apparent, with conservatory studies and deployments in military and nationalist music taking up his early adulthood. Yet he diverged from the party line at the onset of the Cultural Revolution, resulting in his banishment to a succession of labour camps and asylums; regarding the latter, the force of his ostracism and punishment brought forth a complete mental breakdown.

Whilst he speaks, with the tempo of a staccato chant, his symphonies – inspired by the horror of being caged, and his flesh burnt – careen over the sound mix, often drowning out his voice, whilst the subtitles helpfully continue on. As a finale, he plays a discordant folk song on a Steinway grand piano, accompanied by his own commanding voice, all whilst remaining nude. With documentary usually a mode committed to scraping away artifice, Wang Bing idiosyncratically shows – via precise aesthetics, and closely soldering visual form to thematic purpose – how truth might otherwise be conveyed.

Man in Black is a co-production of France, the USA and the UK, staged by Gladys Glover, Le Fresnoy, Louverture Films and Goodman Gallery. Its world sales are handled by Asian Shadows.