Listen Before You Sing (聽見歌再唱) employs almost every device from the handbook of heartwarming and inspirational drama. While it works — as evidenced from the sniffles in the theater — it also results in a cliched and predictable production, albeit one that is hard to dislike.
It’s even more moving that the plot is based on the true story of Aboriginal Bunun educator Bukut Tasvaluan and his Vox Nativa choir, which went from a ragtag group to a highly acclaimed outfit showcasing Aboriginal culture and singing techniques while fostering pride and confidence in its members. They have won numerous awards, and their signature Let’s Clap Together was featured in the late Chi Po-lin’s (齊柏林) 2013 Golden Horse winning documentary Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above (看見台灣) and has since been performed across the world.
First-time feature director Yang Chih-lin (楊智麟) made a documentary on the subject in 2009, and spent the next decade trying to dramatize the tale (part of the struggle was getting Bukut’s approval). It is set in a modern day remote Bunun village, whose elementary school is in danger of closing due to rural flight and the nation’s plummeting birth rate. The school must demonstrate that it has “special characteristics” to stay open, and one might cringe and question where this film is going when a Han Taiwanese teacher suggests, “Aborigines are good at singing, why don’t we have them form a choir and participate in some national competitions?”
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros
The kids immediately defy the stereotypes and prove to be terrible, and Teacher Fang (Umin Boya, a fictional Bukut), who volunteered to lead the choir, is a sports teacher who cannot read music.
The issue of culture loss among the younger generation in these communities is a serious one, and Bukut is seen speaking to elders in Bunun and children only in Mandarin. It’s puzzling at first that the song they choose for their first competition is Mayday’s Mandarin ballad Contentment (知足), but this actually serves to heighten the contrast to their later journey of rediscovering their traditional ways and pride. This transition, however, is a bit abrupt and hard to believe — Aboriginal languages wouldn’t still be struggling to survive if you could get a group of children to start speaking them just like that — but ultimately the message is positive and encouraging, especially to young Aboriginal viewers.
It’s the same problem with the many other plot devices in the film Yang uses for dramatic effect and emotional impact. People don’t change overnight, but everyone seems to do so in this film as their conflicts are resolved instantly somewhere off screen. The dad (Bokeh Kosang) who has a grudge against Bukut and disapproves of the choir suddenly becomes their biggest supporter, and so on.
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros
With nobody actually knowing how to run a choir, it takes itinerant substitute music teacher Ms Huang (Ella Chen, 陳嘉樺) who knows nothing about Bunun culture, to swoop in and save the day. It isn’t clear whether this happened in the real story and Huang, who is unable to secure a full-time job, is also somewhat of an underdog, but this risks falling into the colonial trope of Han people bringing their “advanced” knowledge to “civilize” the Aborigines.
Fortunately, Huang differs from the other one-dimensional, responsibility-shirking Han teachers, who seem to have learned nothing about local culture during their time there. Her character should have been fleshed out more, but at least she doesn’t act like a savior and doesn’t end up as the hero. The whole process is actually quite collaborative with both teachers fully considering the students’ input, and that’s what Taiwan’s education should be like. However, Chen, who is better known as a singer, delivers a less than satisfactory performance.
The child actors, on the other hand, are wonderfully convincing and believable as actual members of the Vox Nativa choir. Their performances are nuanced and natural, and their brilliance alone is enough to make one overlook the other flaws in the film. The production, especially of their performance scenes, is superb, and their voices will linger in the audience’s mind long after the curtain falls.
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros
Despite its flaws, this film is just what it purports to be: a highly mass-appealing tale of inspiration and cultural awakening that brings attention to a Taiwanese success story that’s worth telling.
As mega K-pop group BTS returns to the stage after a hiatus of more than three years, one major market is conspicuously missing from its 12-month world tour: China. The omission of one of the group’s biggest fan bases comes as no surprise. In fact, just the opposite would have been huge news. China has blocked most South Korean entertainment since 2016 under an unofficial ban that also restricts movies and the country’s popular TV dramas. For some Chinese, that means flying to Seoul to see their favorite groups perform — as many were expected to do for three shows opening
A recent report from the Environmental Management Administration of the Ministry of Environment highlights a perennial problem: illegal dumping of construction waste. In Taoyuan’s Yangmei District (楊梅) and Hsinchu’s Longtan District (龍潭) criminals leased 10,000 square meters of farmland, saying they were going to engage in horticulture. They then accepted between 40,000 and 50,000 cubic meters of construction waste from sites in northern Taiwan, charging less than the going rate for disposal, and dumped the waste concrete, tile, metal and glass onto the leased land. Taoyuan District prosecutors charged 33 individuals from seven companies with numerous violations of the law. This
What is the importance within the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) of the meeting between Xi Jinping (習近平), the leader Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), the leader of the KMT? Local media is an excellent guide to determine how important — or unimportant — a news event is to the public. Taiwan has a vast online media ecosystem, and if a news item is gaining traction among readers, editors shift resources in near real time to boost coverage to meet the demand and drive up traffic. Cheng’s China trip is among the top headlines, but by no means
Apr. 13 to Apr. 19 From 17th-century royalty and Presbyterian missionaries to White Terror victims, cultural figures and industrialists, Nanshan Public Cemetery (南山公墓) sprawls across 95 hectares, guarding four centuries of Taiwan’s history. Current estimates show more than 60,000 graves, the earliest dating to 1642. Besides individual tombs, there are also hundreds of family plots, one of which is said to contain around 1,000 remains. As the cemetery occupies valuable land in the heart of Tainan, the government in 2018 began asking families to relocate the graves to make way for development. That
RSS