Eternal Spring
Jason Loftus' animated documentary from Canada spotlights China's suppression of religious and ethnic minorities.
In submitting this film as its 2023 Oscar contender for best international feature, Canada is following the example of Denmark which nominated a comparable documentary in that category this year. That was Flee, also a work featuring animation and one which deserved to win. If Eternal Spring is not quite on that film’s level, it should nevertheless appeal greatly to those who admired the Danish movie. Made by Toronto-based Jason Loftus, this is a film centred on events that took place some twenty years ago. It was then that the authorities in China already hostile to the faith group known as the Falun Gong turned on them even more forcefully. Having started in Changchun City and having attracted many followers, Falun Gong was banned in 1999 by the authorities whose programme included the promotion of atheism. They then proceeded to misrepresent what Falun Gong stood for. Indeed, it was to counteract that propaganda that members of the group conceived a plan to hijack the state TV station and to broadcast a video of their own on it. This action took place on 5th March 2002 but at the cost of the main participants being tracked down, arrested and later tortured. The outcome was that fifteen of them were sentenced to imprisonment for up to twenty years.
Had we not seen films such as Waltz with Bashir (2008) and Flee, it would have seemed surprising to find a documentary on this subject being told largely through animation. But, as those films revealed, using that technique can bring a freshness to serious subject matter and can draw in an audience fully despite the stylisation. In the case of Eternal Spring (that being the English translation of Changchun) the main subject matter is approached through the recent experiences of the comic book artist Daxiong, a former supporter of Falun Gong who had fled to North America after being subjected to police scrutiny after the hijack. At that time, however, his own viewpoint had been that, considering the group’s promotion of the need to avoid retaliation, the illegal act against the TV station had been misguided and had only resulted in further violence. Years later we find Daxiong reconsidering his thoughts on this matter and, in addition to seeing him talk in New York to Falun Gong supporters, we travel with him to Seoul where he meets one of the key figures who had been involved, Jin Xuezhe. What he learnt from the recollections of this man and the others regarding the details of what had happened in 2002 (recollections that are fully illustrated in the film’s animated sequences) would come to impact him significantly. Ultimately, he would accept the view put to him that truth was more important than illegality.
These events may belong to the past but as an insight into life in modern China they should not be forgotten. Twenty years later we are even more aware of being in a world of media manipulation controlled by those in power and that renders this reminder all too timely. So too does the film’s plea for religious toleration (quite apart from Falun Gong still begin banned in China but accepted elsewhere, Eternal Spring most appropriately references the fate of the Urghar Muslims as confirmation that the attitude and response of the Chinese Communists to religious groups remains unchanged). In addition to telling the story of Falun Gong in China and incorporating a detailed account of how the TV hijack was devised and carried out, this film is also a well-earned memorial to the two men at the heart of the plan who are no longer alive, the leader Liang Zhenxing and Lin Chengjun a man always referred to by his colleagues as Big Truck.
With so much rich material involved Eternal Spring can certainly be recommended, but the variety of its content does mean that it lacks the flow so memorably achieved in Flee. The emphasis put on Daxiong is not inappropriate and the drawings of his which we see are strikingly effective. Nevertheless, they do add yet another element to the mix on view here which seeks to combine animation that recreates the past with standard documentary footage showing Daxiong’s many conversations. Even more significantly, the film frequently jumps back-and-forth in time and even the past events do not always emerge in chronological order. Similarly, footage about Big Truck can seem to invite us to follow through that thread only to lead to an abrupt switch to something else before we return later to find out what happened to him.
These are not major flaws but they do explain why the way in which Eternal Spring has been put together renders it a self-conscious work. Because of this it can never match Flee in achieving an emotional impact that leads us as viewers to forget entirely that we are looking at animated drawings. However, one criticism that has been made of this film strikes me as unjustified. It has been accused of being unbalanced because it fails to take account of conservative social attitudes favoured by Falun Gong that are deeply disturbing. That would indeed be relevant if this was a film concerned with approving the faith group, but in fact it is a film about the infringement of human rights by their persecutors in China. And, while it must be admitted that Jason Loftus has given us a film that is less than perfect, he has certainly created one that impresses and which should be seen.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Daxiong, Jin Xuezhe, Xiao Lau, Wang Jianmin, Wang Liansu, Lan Lihua, Zhang Zhingyu, Wang Huilian and with the voices of Shi Jian, Ben Li and Yu Feng.
Dir Jason Loftus, Pro Jason Loftus, Yvan Pinard and Kevin Koo, Ph John Tran, Ed David Schmidt, Music Thomas William Hill, Animation Dir David St-Amant.
Lofty Sky Pictures/Téléfilm Canada-Lofty Sky Pictures.
86 mins. Canada. 2022. US and UK Rel: 21 October 2022. No Cert.
