A young musician from a well-to-do family studying at a private school hardly makes for a fascinating documentary, unless the subject is Wong Ka-jeng (黃家正), the music prodigy and tormented protagonist in KJ: Music and Life (音樂人生), a Hong Kong production that won top honors in three categories including Best Documentary, Best Editing and Best Sound Effects at this year’s Golden Horse Awards (金馬獎).
KJ is the stuff of genius. At the tender age of 11, he is playing in a professional orchestra in the Czech Republic. Six years later, he is conducting his own orchestra at a prestigious private school.
KJ is also a complex 17 year-old. He behaves arrogantly in front of friends, peers and family members, and cares little about competitions and awards. But he is also a sensitive soul, one who longs for recognition from the people he cares about and broods over existential questions.
With KJ’s compelling personality and the sense of closeness he shares with director Cheung King-wai (張經緯) in front to the camera, one immediately feels absorbed into his life story. We learn to understand KJ’s musical talent from multiple angles as Cheung aims to show KJ’s relationships with his mentor, his friends, his siblings and his father. The extensive interviews shot at two different periods of KJ’s career (ages 11 and 17) are deployed in an effective and coherent manner, as the film goes back and forth between the two time frames to paint an affecting portrait of a young, tormented mind.
Though KJ’s philosophical questioning about life and music may sound like the empty blather of your average melancholy adolescent, the sense of urgency and the candor in his voice will remind viewers of their own forgotten youthful passions.
With KJ’s mother curiously missing from the documentary, the father-son relationship is featured predominantly as a key factor in the young man’s music career. One of the most powerful moments of the film occurs when KJ explains the breakdown of his relationship with his father, which is intercut with a scene where the then-11-year-old boy weeps as his doctor father affectionately pats his head.
Ultimately, KJ: Music and Life paints a tragic figure whose far-too-early success and talent make him a vulnerable and sad outcast who desperately seeks what he cannot find in those close to him.
The film will screen at Vie Show Cinema, Xinyi District (信義威秀影城) in Taipei for a limited period of two weeks with only one screening per day. For show times, go to tw.myblog.yahoo.com/kjmusiclife.
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