Worth: $13.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Ting Wu, Chen Ying-Yu, He Tao, Sam Trammell, Chen-Jun Cheng
Intro:
Successfully harrowing without being gratuitous …
When a title card bears the message that the ensuing film is based on true events, it can sometimes elicit curiosity about how much heavy lifting the word “based” is doing. When the film in question deals with the politically and historically charged events surrounding the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, this feeling is amplified.
Co-writer/director Leon Lee has depicted this humanitarian crisis in Unsilenced, a moving and often confronting drama/thriller centering on a group of university students trying to survive and thwart a brutal crackdown, with the help of a world-weary American journalist. As admirable and affecting as Lee’s film is, it’s not without missteps. In the words of the late great Roger Ebert, “it’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.”
We are initially drawn in by wonderful performances from the cast of young actors. In particular, Ting Wu, Chen Ying-Yu and He Tao’s naïveté is deeply endearing and grounds the film — they are the reason some of the more twee moments land and the dramatic ones are so gripping. Alas, the tonally inconsistent screenplay undermines the momentum by having them sometimes speak in idealistic platitudes.
Early on, engineering PhD student Wang (Ting Wu) appears to be questioned by his professor (a compassionate Chen-Jun Cheng) as to why he didn’t slightly fudge his data to acquire a funding grant. “You know I am a Falun Gong practitioner. I can’t abandon truth just for convenience,” he replies, with wide-eyed innocence. Similarly clunky dialogue peppers the film which, while likely intended to highlight their virtue, slightly hinders relatability.
A further roadblock to the film’s efficacy is its overbearing and unnecessarily saccharine score. Genuinely poignant moments are accompanied by the same emotionally manipulative piano cues, almost without exception. The music is quite beautiful outside the dramatic context of the film, but its flagrant use in these heart-rending scenes outstays its welcome to a predictable and almost humorous degree.
The strength of Leon Lee’s achievement lies in the elevated sense of personal and political stakes throughout. The sequences of torture inflicted on the Falun Gong members, while fleeting, are difficult to stomach — one will be hard to watch for even the most seasoned viewer. Successfully harrowing without being gratuitous, these moments show him as a director in command of his technical craft, while also hinting at the film that might have resulted if he, as a writer, had a firmer grasp on tone.
Just like the spiritual organisation at its heart, Unsilenced is banned in China. Largely filmed in Taiwan, many of the film’s crew used aliases or remained anonymous, fearing the CCP’s retaliation for their involvement. The necessity for this film is undeniable, even if one is left wishing its message had been articulated more clearly.
