Review of Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2012) by Jim H — 03 Sep 2012

"Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry" is an insightful, engaging and inspiring documentary about the activist and famed artist. That having been said, I am sure there are some people who might find it strange that I use the word inspiring for an artist who makes his art from smashing antique vases and pointing his middle finger at landmarks, especially Tiananmen Square.(By the way, does anybody know if there are any photos of his middle finger in front of Yankee Stadium?) I think both are symbolic of how nothing is sacred, especially the Chinese government who he is in a running battle with to gain transparency into the inner workings of its bureaucracy. After they shut down his blog, he went on Twitter and distributed his documentaries for free over the internet. His style is definitely confrontational, as somebody says he reminds him of a hooligan, but in a good way.(As Ani DiFranco once sang, being nice is overrated.) Remember, we are all hooligans, right now.

Ai Weiwei's activism hit a critical point when he criticized the treatment of the poor during the 2008 Olympics and the response to the Sichuan earthquake which killed several thousand children in faulty construction that has been compared to tofu. As New Yorker magazine correspondent Evan Osnos points out, Ai Weiwei was initially inspired politically by the Iran Contra hearings when he was living in the United States that sought to hold a government responsible but did not work as well as some of us would have liked. So, instead of the fortune his son would inherit, he will have something much more precious to leave him.

Now, if I can only figure out if the cat opening the door is supposed to be a metaphor or just darn cute.