Review of Human Flow (2017) by Christiana C — 03 Dec 2017

Ai Wei Wei is hilarious. This movie was amalgamation of visually beautiful moving images, thoughtful storytelling and thoughtless editing. This film would have been a powerful film at the half of its length, but altogether felt like a really attractive guy with ADD who rambles. (Imagine you are about to have an orgasm or fall asleep constantly or both at the same time.).

To give a benefit of the doubt, I was physically starving the whole movie and regretting my decision to not claim my free popcorn as a member of the theater. But I'm sure that even if I watched the movie with my belly full, I would have still wished that the movie was better condensed.

The movie kind of felt like those old "Where's Wally" books with a myriad of people and him traveling from one page to another just hanging out somewhere in a corner taking lots of selfies.

His message in the movie is clear. "Look. Look at these people in motion, and the dignity we strip away from them as we deny their entering into our worlds" As much as the message is powerful and beautifully conveyed, (and as much as I feel like a terrible human saying this) at some point it was like "Cool. Anything else?" Monotonous repetition weakened overall took away magic from this film.

I might just be too practical, but I find documentaries that not only shed light on the problems but also the why, or potential solutions more satisfying. While he gave us an in-depth view of the victims' lives, he gave a very shallow insight into the "evil" he mentions a few times in the movie. There was no invitation from the director on "Hey, but here's what we can do to help." When I see something like this, I wonder if the directors' goal was just to depict the problem or evoke change? It just sounded like the former for this one. It's totally fine for an artist, but it just felt... irresponsible.

However, because of the overall monotony, some precious details stood out more. The moment when a paper crane is hung by a string from a wired wall to symbolize humans' vulnerable density tied, and flapping back and forth due to the wind, the force of nature we can't control. The moment where he shot the shadows of refuges walking across a bridge with a guard rail that in shadow looked like prison cells, and it looked like they kept walking but within the invisible prison. All the slightly too long of gaze of humans that seem like a silent scream of "We are humans too. Look." A tiger in a case who circles around in an anger who have zero control nor pathway to his escape. Zooming from the drone shot of the grid of camps to the ground where humans stand.

These are the moments of poetry that stood out to me. It wasn't clear to me if he wanted to go with humor, or poetry or politics, but maybe that's just Ai Wei Wei. He went with all three. I felt again like being invited to a date to a guy who just wanted to show me everything but without fully understanding who he is himself.

I walked out of the theater, with a growling stomach and one successfully communicated message to me, which is the importance of dignity in humanity in all of this. There is a quote by Stalin, "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." Ai Wei Wei just elaborated this with images. Some shots will be engrained in my head forever (Together with random images of his selfies and haircuts which I still don't get... why) and so I guess whatever he tried worked.