Don’t be put off by the dead body in the opening scene of Silent Teacher — you’ll likely be moved to tears later. No exaggerating here, there was much sobbing heard during the screening. Director Maso Chen (陳志漢) tackles a potentially morbid subject with sensitivity, crafting a tender and informative documentary on “silent teachers” (大體老師), or people who have donated their body to medical schools for dissection.
Due to the traditional belief in keeping one’s corpse whole, medical schools in Taiwan often have difficulty finding cadavers for their students to dissect in anatomy classes. As a result, the cadaver-to-medical student ratio in Taiwan is five times lower than that of Western countries. Here, these bodies are literally treated as “teachers,” with the students bowing and thanking them after each session.
It could be argued that the film’s protagonist is Hsu Yu-e (徐玉娥), a Chiayi woman whose body is being prepared for dissection at Fu Jen Catholic University’s medical school (the process takes about a year), but the narrative is primarily told through Lin Hui-tsung (林惠宗), her husband of 23 years, who travels to Taipei every month to update his wife’s body on how the family is doing. Both of them had signed up to donate their bodies for education.
Photo courtesy of The Classic Vision
The film also places much attention on the medical students and staff, especially as they have to interact with their designated corpse’s family members, who are pretty much involved in every step of the process (except for watching the dissection, which they can’t bear to do).
The professor repeatedly stresses that the cadaver is more than just a body to dissect — it is a lesson in respecting life. And like the class, the scope of the film reaches way beyond the subject matter, which is clearly and cohesively presented — the director also explores deeper themes on life, death and humanity.
We hear their daughter discussing what she has learned about life from this experience, while the anatomy class professor ponders whether she can handle her students dissecting her own mother, who has volunteered to be a silent teacher when she dies. There’s also discussion of religion through how a Catholic university handles bodies from people with Buddhist or Taoist backgrounds. The cause of Hsu’s death is revealed indirectly as the students dissect her body.
Photo courtesy of The Classic Vision
Through masterful editing, much of the story is told through conversations and slice-of-life scenes — and there is much material to choose from as the director spent a year documenting Lin’s life, after Hsu’s body arrived at Fu Ren. For example, we only learn that he visits his wife’s body often through his casual banter with the medical staff. Lin is an ideal candidate for this type of story — he appears optimistic most of the time as we watch him try to carry on with his life — even posing for selfies in a karaoke bar. His positive attitude makes the film less heavy, but his grief is still there, and our hearts break when he breaks down.
Since there are essentially two timelines going on with the family and the medical school — which only converge every now and then — it makes for some interesting juxtaposition scenes that the director fully makes use of. And while the cadaver is frequently shown in the film, it is treated delicately but not too conservatively. We see just enough to realize that this is without a doubt reality, but not too much that we would feel uncomfortable.
Running just 73 minutes, there’s a lot packed into this film, but it doesn’t seem rushed — in fact it’s probably just long enough. When a viewer leaves the theater full of emotions, thoughts and new information without any hints of boredom — that’s all the signs of a good documentary.
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
On May 2, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), at a meeting in support of Taipei city councilors at party headquarters, compared President William Lai (賴清德) to Hitler. Chu claimed that unlike any other democracy worldwide in history, no other leader was rooting out opposing parties like Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). That his statements are wildly inaccurate was not the point. It was a rallying cry, not a history lesson. This was intentional to provoke the international diplomatic community into a response, which was promptly provided. Both the German and Israeli offices issued statements on Facebook
May 18 to May 24 Pastor Yang Hsu’s (楊煦) congregation was shocked upon seeing the land he chose to build his orphanage. It was surrounded by mountains on three sides, and the only way to access it was to cross a river by foot. The soil was poor due to runoff, and large rocks strewn across the plot prevented much from growing. In addition, there was no running water or electricity. But it was all Yang could afford. He and his Indigenous Atayal wife Lin Feng-ying (林鳳英) had already been caring for 24 orphans in their home, and they were in
Australia’s ABC last week published a piece on the recall campaign. The article emphasized the divisions in Taiwanese society and blamed the recall for worsening them. It quotes a supporter of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) as saying “I’m 43 years old, born and raised here, and I’ve never seen the country this divided in my entire life.” Apparently, as an adult, she slept through the post-election violence in 2000 and 2004 by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the veiled coup threats by the military when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became president, the 2006 Red Shirt protests against him ginned up by
RSS