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.
Last week the Economist (“A short history of Taiwan and China, in maps,” July 10) and Al Jazeera both sent around short explainers of the Taiwan-China issue. The Al Jazeera explainer, which discussed the Cold War and the rivalry between the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), began in the postwar era with US intervention in the Chinese Civil War and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) retreat to Taiwan. It was fairly standard, and it works because it appeals to the well-understood convention that Taiwan enters history in 1949 when the KMT retreats to it. Very different, and far
Eight months after President Xi Jinping (習近平) pledged to bring 50,000 US students to China to stabilize ties, Beijing has made its largest outreach yet. For some Americans, the most progress came in surprising moments outside the official program. Groups affiliated with the Chinese government welcomed some 220 young Americans to a weeklong bonding festival in the southeastern province of Fujian last month. But while many US attendees said they were grateful to visit the world’s No 2 economy, several criticized the youth festival as scripted and lacking open dialogue. With ties between the two superpowers tense over Beijing’s support for Russia’s
To step through the gates of the Lukang Folk Arts Museum (鹿港民俗文物館) is to step back 100 years and experience the opulent side of colonial Taiwan. The beautifully maintained mansion set amid a manicured yard is a prime example of the architecture in vogue among wealthy merchants of the day. To set foot inside the mansion itself is to step even further into the past, into the daily lives of Hokkien settlers under Qing rule in Taiwan. This museum should be on anyone’s must-see list in Lukang (鹿港), whether for its architectural spledor or its cultural value. The building was commissioned
July 15 to July 21 Depending on who you ask, Taiwan Youth (台灣青年) was a magazine that either spoke out against Japanese colonialism, espoused Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) ideology or promoted Taiwanese independence. That’s because three publications with contrasting ideologies, all bearing the same Chinese name, were established between 1920 and 1960. Curiously, none of them originated in Taiwan. The best known is probably The Tai Oan Chheng Lian, launched on July 16, 1920 by Taiwanese students in Tokyo as part of the growing non-violent resistance movement against Japanese colonial rule. A crucial part of the effort was to promote Taiwanese