In Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, Weiwei’s mindset of “if you don’t act, danger becomes stronger,” is touched on extensively through this movie. Each of his actions portrayed in the movie, unfortunately, are aggressively shown.
Ai’s photos that he snaps of people from his past, and posting them with no permission, appear too often in the movie. It is understandable that Ai wants to show the true character of people, but this film makes it look like he is almost embarrassing these people, and on top of that, he’s making them feel responsible. Even though the film catches Ai stating he is not looking for an apology from people, it feels like the movie shows the total opposite. On the contrary what is shown on film is effort. From his effect to go viral, there should have been many steps involved, it looks too easy in the film the way he finished some of his projects. For the majority of the movie, the process he went through was totally eliminated.
Ai completes very ambitiously scaled work that nowhere near can fit on canvas. Furthermore, there is always a narrative behind it that the movie provides. He feels that communicating and using our language has the ability to transform history. He does a lot of experimenting with graphics for his largescale projects. In each project featured, the movie found a way to bring out the message both clearly and safely. One of his projects incorporated eleven million individual handcrafted pieces. Another project consisting of hundreds of school bags to spell out a message for one out of numerous students involved in the devastating earthquake. The movie aided us to see how much the happening of the earthquake got to Ai emotionally. He is portrayed as becoming obsessed with the earthquake experience to do something for every individual involved. He has a remarkable talent of incorporating what he saw during the earthquake to become an inspiration for this specific project. The finished project was not as much visual as it was conceptual. The movie becomes repetitive with it seeming like he goes from project to project or campaign to campaign, but he organizes them well and they are well thought out and completely original.
Ai is open and honest about the times when his effort has a negative effect, even showing it on social media. The movie captured this as his new studio was apparently claimed to be illegal. This was directly after he designed it to be one of the most amazing studios around. Rather than being discouraged, Ai chooses to celebrate as a protest. He ends up hosting a crab feast at the building structure. The movie makes it look like he treasures the meaning of protest and finds it entertaining.
Through his art career, we see scenes of him layering paint over and dropping vases that have meaning to his culture. He is visually throwing at our face that destruction is happening to the culture itself. Ai has an obsession with seeing objects that were destroyed as well as printing numerous photographs of similar destructed objects. In earlier years, he had an obsession with cutting objects apart like shoes and making pieces of work from them. By doing this so often, he was asked to exhibit his unique style at every showing there was in New York. Ai even shows his scars and wounds on social media after a blow to his head from a policeman. Hospital photos he took of himself had very clearly captured gruesomeness and pain.
The movie pieces together multiple clips of sensors and video cameras installed around ai’s studio to enforce how much he was not like the common citizen. The move seems to show us he can no longer be trusted. Switching over to other social media sources to bypass internet sensors made him seem like he was testing how far he could really go. He distributed his own books or documentaries, and he wouldn’t allow people to be charged for them. Many of them could be accessed through his extremely well built up social media pages the movie captures. This man is so determined that his social media has power that after being banned from it, he felt lifeless. The movie makes it seem like the reason is that he was so addicted to the media. Nonstop there are clips where the only thing we are watching is of him posting. Furthermore, the instant his banded time is up, he gets right back to posting in a matter of seconds. To enforce how much he is not trusted, the movie clip shows him in later years being escorted by two adults at all times.
Altogether, the film has too many similar scenes that don’t show his talent in art, rather the type of bold person Ai is. Half of the time the scenes backfire anyway, his projects get shut down by the government. I am glad to know from the movie about his supportive family with how much he stands out and goes above and beyond in effort. Actual video footage of Ai aids us to understand details that lack because of a language barrier, for an audience will have to deal with half of the film narrated in Ai’s native Chinese language. As well, parts of the film are never related to his artwork. Rather it shows footage of his true family, friends, and prior classmates. These people didn’t even share the same belief Ai had or boldness. Therefore, the film makes this effect that his reputation starts to outride everybody else in his community, including him in the end.
