“AI WEI WEI: NEVER SORRY” My rating: B+ (Opening August 17 at the Tivoli and Glenwood Arts)
91 minutes | MPAA rating: R
The movies go through heroes like McDonald’s goes through cows. But “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” offers us a real-life hero unlike any we’ve ever seen.
It’s not just that Ai doesn’t look like your conventional leading man. He’s fat, with a scraggly beard in a constant state of evolution. He resembles a scholar depicted in an old Chinese screen…except that ancient Chinese scholars were rarely seen flipping the bird (literally, the obscene hand gesture) at the authority figures in their society.
Ai Wei Wei, the subject of Alison Klayman’s documentary, is an artist by profession. He was one of the designers of the Bird’s Nest, the spectacular arena that was the centerpiece of Beijing’s 2008 Summer Olympics, and his art –usually in the form of huge installations using found materials — in recent years has been featured in solo shows in London, Munich and Sao Paolo.
But Ai’s true art may be found in his embrace of the truth and his disdain for hypocrisy. He’s a social critic of the first order, a gadfly who devotes himself to poking China’s Communist leaders in the eye at every opportunity.
Because China has opened up economically, those of us in the West may be inclined to think that the society as a whole is, generally speaking, free.
Ai’s angry art gives the lie to that misconception. Political freedom is unknown in China and the state has a sneaky way of washing its hands of its own sins.
When an earthquake killed nearly 70,000 citizens — 5,000 of them students who died when shoddily-built and substandard school buildings collapsed — Ai responded to the government’s silence on the matter (the issue of cut-rate construction was never acknowledged) by creating art reflecting the tragedy. He covered a wall with the names of the 5,000 dead students. Later, in Munich, he created a huge installation made with 5,000 brightly colored children’s backpacks.
Moreover, Ai went public with his regrets about contributing to the Bird’s Nest, saying that the magnificent structure was used by the authorities to draw attention away from their systematic repression of basic human rights.
He’s a vocal and outspoken supporter of other artists who have gone to prison for dissident activities, and he drives the authorities to distraction with his canny use of Twitter to communicate with his extensive army of followers around the globe.
Klayman’s film looks into Ai’s past (the son of a poet exiled to a farm during the Cultural Revolution, he studied art for nearly 10 years in the United States) and his current life.
By Chinese standards he lives quite well, in a modern studio overrun with pets (one of his cats has learned to open doors by leaping up on the handles). His wife is also an artist and dissident. His mother frets that his activities will lead to arrest, imprisonment or worse.
Like Andy Warhol, Ai rarely fashions his art. He comes up with ideas which are executed by artisans he describes as far more talented with their hands than he is.
He’s not perfect. It’s revealed late in the film that Ai has fathered a child by a young woman, a fact that with a shrug he admits does not sit well with the Missus.
Filmed over two years, “Ai Wei Wei: Never Sorry” chronicles the artist’s battles with authorities. In one instance police enter his hotel room in the middle of the night and an overzealous officer clobbers him on the head. A few days later in Munich, where a big show is opening, Ai is rushed into surgery to relieve the swelling of his brain.
Ai knows he could be arrested at any moment, and that only his fame keeps him free. Even that is no guarantee. At one point he vanishes for 90 days into police custody, emerging a humbled and much quieter individual.
| Robert W. Butler
In a way, WeiWei stands for all artists, with his heightened ability to discern and comment on the world around him–mostly to the world’s bewilderment. I give it an “A.”