The fight for religious freedom in modern-day China is a topic many in the West are generally aware of, yet few in much depth or detail. Part of the problem is state censorship ― even in the Information Age, the Chinese Communist Party’s control over the international narrative of their tactics of oppression prevents people both domestically and abroad from gleaning the nature and scale of that oppression. Say the words “Falun Gong” to the average person outside of China’s borders and you’re likely to be met with an expression of blank confusion. Lest they recall a brief flurry of sporadic news reports from 20-odd years ago, or they’ve paid more than a few seconds’ passing attention to the silent protests held in a few major global cities, those words may not mean anything to the average person at all.
Jason Loftus’ Eternal Spring may go some way toward changing that. Canada’s official submission for the International Feature Film Oscar this year, the part-animated documentary concerns the 2002 media hijack undertaken by the leadership of China’s banned, peaceful religious group Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa, and its impact on those involved. Aided by the fact that one of the group’s practitioners then and now, Daxiong, is a Toronto-based animator, Loftus’ film recreates key events in and around the media takeover, in which Falun Gong attempted to combat the hostile perception the CCP had instilled in its populace by hijacking TV news broadcasts to promote their pacifist spiritual values.
It was a risky endeavor and its impacts have been long-lasting and widespread ― Loftus is nothing if not clear on this, detailing the persecution of high-ranking Falun Gong members and their associates through testimonies obtained through Daxiong, then rendered here in 3D animation. Some were imprisoned, some tortured, some murdered by the authorities; most fled and some have since died, including years later yet still as a result of injuries sustained during their persecution. It’s a tough, tragic story, with only unpleasant outcomes for its protagonists, even as some have found peace, happiness and success in their lives since those troubled times.
This is a simple, straightforward film, even as it tells its story across separate timelines ― that of the present, in live action documentary, and that of the past, in the animated accounts of Falun Gong’s origins and swift domestic demise (China is the only country in the world where the religion is outlawed). Alas, it’s rather too simple. Although always affecting, these stories occur almost exactly as one might expect, a quality exacerbated by Loftus’ decision to yield to this inevitability right from the jump, explicating key details regarding circumstances and outcomes in the story up front. There’s little-to-no suspense, which is a peculiar choice, given that the sequence leading up to the hijack has a heist-like design and structure, yet we already know the team pulls off their audacious stunt. We also already know that they’ll end up paying terribly for it and we know too which parties will end up paying the most, since it’s made clear early and often in both verbiage and tone which persons are no longer alive to tell their part of the story.
The predictability of the story might not matter greatly were Eternal Spring a stylistically ambitious, distinctive work of the level of impact its story deserves. Alas, it’s not this either. Daxiong’s animation is exquisite and emotive, yet he is not one of this film’s animators. Aside from an arresting opening sequence, in which we dive into the animator’s page and travel down street, up staircase, all over a neighborhood as the film depicts the search and capture of Falun Gong members, the animation style is rudimentary and, worse, it reduces potently emotional accounts of extraordinary events to banal cartoons. When Loftus opts to cut away and focus instead on the visages of his interviewees, he finds in them displays of real, raw feeling, the likes of which these animated sequences simply can’t replicate.
Eternal Spring also suffers from a slight split identity, not in its marriage of past and present narratives ― they’re really just two parts to the one narrative ― but in its awkward reconciliation of a pessimistic outlook on the past and an optimistic outlook on the future. Daxiong’s personal journey from doubting and disapproving of the group’s hijacking to understanding and appreciating it is a profound one, yet it’s only documented here in passing. Loftus focuses instead on a more general, somewhat mixed picture of hope for what may yet be to come for Falun Gong. With the sting of reality still present, represented by text cards outlining the difficult situation for the religion’s practitioners in China, alongside those of other faiths, Eternal Spring closes with sweet, gentle animated scenes offering a rosy message of love triumphing over hate. It lacks both the hard evidence to back this message up and the artistic conviction to make it with much persuasiveness. It feels like a typically North American, outsider’s perspective, an audience-friendly happy ending to a story that otherwise shows no signs of achieving such an ending. Maybe Loftus’ film is intended to induce such an ending. More power to it if that’s the case, though a statement as artistically and politically lackluster as this is already absent said power itself.
Photo courtesy of Lofty Sky Pictures
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