Day: December 3, 2014

China’s Injustice System on SundanceTV: LFM Reviews One Child

By Joe Bendel. The Chinese Communist Party has no shortage of criminal laws, but you wouldn’t call it a justice system. The guilty can freely buy their way out of prosecution and the wronged often spend decades fruitlessly petitioning the government for redress. Overturning an unjust capital conviction is not merely difficult, it is downright Kafkaesque. Nonetheless, that is the position a British adoptee finds herself in when she agrees to help her birthmother try to save the brother she never knew in the two-night mini-series One Child, which premieres on SundanceTV this Friday and Saturday.

Mei Ashley was put up for adoption as an infant, because she was a girl. Happily raised by her provincial middle class parents, Jim and Katherine Ashley, she is a rather well-adjusted, thoroughly English astrophysics student, until she gets a call out of the blue from China. Having traced her from the orphanage, journalist Qianyi implores her to come to China to help save her brother Li Jun. He happened to be at the wrong club on the wrong night, when the entitled son of a Guangzhou oligarch killed a Nigerian trader while on a drug-fueled rage. Ordinarily, his father would simply pay off the victim’s family, but since the Nigerian government demanded a prosecution, Li Jun was framed in his place.

Inconveniently, Ashley lacks the connections Qiangyi hoped for, but she comes to Guangzhou anyway, neglecting to explain the full circumstances of the trip to her protective parents. The first meeting with her birthmother is highly awkward, but when she visits her brother in prison, they share an instant connection. Much to the abject horror of the local British consular officer, Ashley gets involved with a group of dissident attorneys, hoping they can overturn Li Jun’s death sentence. To do so, they will have to convince eleven Chinese witnesses and four Nigerians to recant their testimony.

Screenwriter Guy Hibbert shows a keen understanding of the ruthlessness and arbitrary application of principle in the Party’s courts. There are scenes that directly echo Zhao Liang’s devastating documentary Petition, while the ticking clock generates just as much suspense as any well-executed (an unfortunate choice of words) death-row thriller. Yet frustratingly, One Child comes to a screeching halt whenever it cuts back to Mr. and Mrs. Ashley for another session of their hand-wringing.

From "One Child."

Katie Leung plays Mei Ashley as a reasonably down-to-earth fish-out-of-water, without becoming annoyingly helpless. As Qiangyi, Linh Dan Pham is a smart and intriguing screen presence, while Junix Inocian steals scene after scene as Mr. Lin, a dodgy private investigator. Kunjue Li will also make some viewers wish human rights attorney Cheng hua has more screen time. However, Mardy Ma delivers the real punch to the solar plexus as Ashley’s achingly distraught birthmother, a true proletarian repeatedly victimized by the Party’s policies and corruption.

Frankly, when the Ashleys are not whining, One Child is a tight, tense, and topical international legal drama.  Although One Child does not belabor the titular policy, the pain and guilt it causes are reflected with great sensitivity in every one of Ma’s scenes. It is also an opportune reminder of how dangerous it is to practice law in an honest and independent manner under the CCP. Just ask Ai Weiwei’s former lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, currently in prison, awaiting prosecution on highly specious charges. One Child gives viewers a sneak peak at the sort of challenges his defense team will face. Highly recommended as a gripping indictment of corruption and a complicated portrait of a post-“One Child Policy” family, One Child parts one and two air this Friday (12/5) and Saturday (12/6) on SundanceTV.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on December 3rd, 2014 at 3:59pm.

Diving for Oil: LFM Reviews Pioneer

By Joe Bendel. It makes perfect sense George Clooney would sign up for the remake of this Norwegian film. It includes two of his favorite activities: scuba diving and blaming America. It is the early 1980s, when Norway is poised to become enormously wealthy thanks to the discovery of oil in the North Sea. Evidently, that is a bad thing. Constructing a pipeline to reach it will be a tricky proposition. Two advanced deep sea diver brothers are supposed to do the hardest parts, but they will be engulfed by a shadowy conspiracy in Erik Skjoldbjærg’s Pioneer, which opens this Friday in New York.

As Pioneer opens, Petter is about to make history for enduring the deepest simulated dive. He will also start hallucinating. Can we ever really trust his perceptions going forward? It is hard to say, because Skjoldbjærg never overtly plays the ambiguous reality-untrustworthy POV cards. Near as we can tell, Petter just shakes off his light-headedness and moves on to the next mission. This time he and his brother Knut will be diving for real. However, since the American engineering firm has assumed operational control, they will now be breathing in the Yanks’ double-secret oxygen tank additive.

Of course, the dive goes spectacularly badly, culminating in Knut’s death. Frankly, it kind of-sort of looks like Petter’s fault, but others quite considerately step forward to take the blame. A-ha, it must be the additive. If he can just get a sample to a colleague, he will be able to prove, well he’s not quite sure what, but something really bad.

Forget the unreliable narrator, Pioneer gives us an unreliable script. Credited to Skjoldbjærg and a battery of three other screenwriters, it keeps the conspiracy ridiculously murky. Basically, all we can glean with certainty is that the Americans will do anything for oil and there is a man with a limp out there up to no good.

From "Pioneer."

On the plus side, Pioneer perfectly channels the atmosphere and vibe of paranoid 1970s thrillers, like Parallax View. As Petter (whose entire wardrobe seems to be corduroy), Aksel Hennie looks so Seventies, it is almost tragic. He also projects a quiet mania that really helps the film chug along. Wes Bentley and Stephen Lang chew a bit of scenery as the villainous Americans, but they never elevate their stock characters above the level of predictable cliché. Likewise, Miss Bala’s Stephanie Sigman is largely wasted as Knut’s widow Maria, who simply turns up from time to time to pretend she’s not guilt-tripping Petter when she really is.

Ambiguity can be a powerful element in cinema, but viewers should have a sense that it is all part of the filmmakers’ deliberate strategy. In the case of Pioneer, it just feels like they lost track of the possible implications of early scenes. Technically, it is an impressive package, especially the work of cinematographer Jallo Faber, who makes early 1980s Norway look so dingy and depressed, it pretty much justifies whatever whoever may or may not have done to hasten the oil boom. The result is an odd curio of a film that simply cannot justify Manhattan ticket prices. It opens this Friday (12/5) in New York at the Cinema Village.

LFM GRADE: C-

Posted on December 3rd,2014 at 3:58pm.