Film editor and multi-award-winning TV director Lin Chih-ju's (林志儒) first full-length feature, The Wall (牆之魘), a human drama that revisits the tumultuous White Terror era, adheres to the humanitarian heritage passed down from his New Wave mentors such as Ko Yi-cheng (柯一正), Li Tao-ming (李道明) and Wan Jen (萬仁).
Lin's story of the oppressed, set against the backdrop of the 228 Incident, won the best film award at the International Film Festival of India last year. Back home, however, the movie has stirred controversy with its examination of a painful period of the country's history.
Set in 1950s Taiwan, the film opens with newly weds A-chen and A-yi getting on with a seemingly simple life in the countryside. Before long, A-chen, the artless wife, discovers a Japanese man hidden in a burrow behind their shack. An intellectual and communist, Kimura came to Taiwan on the eve of the Pacific War to spread proletarian revolution only to find himself hunted by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) secret agents after the conflagration's end.
PHOTO: C OURTESY OF LIN CHIH-JU
A loyal follower of Kimura, the husband offers to shelter his mentor despite constant harassment from the police. One night, when A-yi is again summoned to the police station for questioning, a frightened and anxious A-chen frees the would-be revolutionary who then rapes her.
The wife becomes pregnant, not knowing which of the two men is the father. A-yi chooses to remain silent as he believes the reward for their sacrifices will come when socialist ideals triumph in Taiwan.
Racked with remorse, Kimura crawls out of his hideaway one night, determined to disappear from the couple's life. A-yi runs after him and vanishes into the night.
A-chen wakes up the next morning only to discover that her husband may be the biggest victim in the tragedy, crushed under the weight of his own guilt.
Using a simple structure to tell a story rich in drama and tension, the film succeeds in believably depicting how ordinary people cope under repressive regimes. Realistic in style and linear in narration, The Wall boasts neither a cast of pop idols nor stylistic looks, but depends on the strong performances of its cast to convey a sober perspective on humanity. The weakest point of the narration, however, is the movie's treatment of A-yi's socialist conviction, which is conveniently reduced to a hollow chant of the Internationale.
Shot on a budget of around NT$7.2 million, most of it made up of loans from friends, the film bears the hallmarks of a movie made with limited resources. The sex scenes, surreal moments finely executed through a resonant delivery of emotional intensity, exceed expectations.
Cinematographic attainment aside, what plucks viewers' emotional responses most is, perhaps, the fact that the film is inspired by a true story that is more unfathomable than this fictional work.
Lin became fascinated with the life of Shih Ju-chen (施儒珍) when he was asked to make a documentary on the late victim of the White Terror four years ago. An active communist, Shih hid from the secret police in a small space between the walls of his younger brother's abode. Shih's parents were tortured, his wife raped by a secret agent, his brother attempted suicide and his father was killed by a train while returning home from the police station. Nevertheless, Shih remained hidden and died of illness after 18 years of self-imprisonment.
"The more I thought about the story, the more horrifying it got," said Lin, who interviewed Shih's younger brother, now in his 80s, and other family members. "The way I see it, there are only two possibilities - it's either the brother who had gone mad and locked Shih up or Shih had gone insane behind that wall long before his death. I simply couldn't tackle the material as matters of fact."
Changing the nationality of the communist agitator, Lin thought, would create a sense of distance between the character and audiences. The substitution, however, generated disapproval from politicians, who argue that the film risks subverting history and, given Taiwan's colonial history, questionably confers on a Japanese national the status of mentor.
A competent production that examines oppression, The Wall seems inevitably trapped in a political quagmire in which history is viewed as a battlefield for contesting ideologies.
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