Ying
Liang is an artist without a country. In
large measure, this film is why. After
it premiered at the Jeonju International Film Festival earlier this year, word
reached Ying that he should not to return to China—or else. A dramatized documentary about the suspicious
irregularities surrounding the prosecution (or persecution) of an accused
murderer is hardly the project to curry favor with the Chinese Communist
Party. Yet, any production from a
filmmaker of Ying’s integrity necessarily entails risk in today’s China. As a result, When Night Falls (trailer here) will be even more timely and significant
when it screens during the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival.
After
suffering a severe beating at the hands of the Shanghai police, Yang Jia
allegedly firebombed the police courtyard, stormed the station, and stabbed six
active duty officers to death. This
sounds like a man they should have recruited for their special forces. Instead, they tried and convicted him in a
series of kangaroo courts, while holding his mother Wang Jingmei incommunicado for
one hundred forty-three days in a Soviet-style mental hospital. None other than Ai Weiwei filed a missing
person report on her behalf. By the time
she is finally released, her son’s fate is effectively sealed, but the mother
and a well-meaning but unwieldy group of human rights attorneys desperately try
to overturn Yang Jia’s death sentence.
Without
question, Night is a forceful indictment
of the Chinese justice system, which the government has so cleverly rebutted by
harassing Ying’s parents and threatening him with arrest. At each step of the case, Ying makes it clear
the police and prosecutors disregarded their own rules to suit their
purposes. Several times characters
flat-out denounce the state, including the judges passing sentence, as the real
criminals in this affair. That is rather
bold filmmaking in contemporary China, some might even say foolhardy, but it in
no way excuses the Party’s vindictive response.
Ying
is a very good filmmaker, but he is also a demanding one. He definitely shares some of the aesthetic
sensibilities of Jia Zhangke and the so-called Digital Generation of
independent filmmakers. Severely
restrained, Night is like an
anti-melodrama, despite the gross injustice and tragedy unfolding around Wang
Jingmei. Yet, there is no mistaking her terrible
anguish thanks to Nai An’s remarkable performance. Viewers can feel in their bones how broken
this woman is, as she struggles to find a way to keep fighting for her son.