Youth (Spring) (2023, Wang Bing) (Patreon)

42/100

Finally had to watch one of Wang's epic docs all the way through, after previously bailing on Fengming: A Chinese Memoir and—nearly three hours in!—Dead Souls; this one was selected for Cannes Competition and NYFF's "Main Slate" (I still hate that designation), so by my self-imposed rules it had to be accorded the proper respect. And of course I, the Philistine, would have strongly urged Wang to cut, I dunno, at least two of its 3½ hours? (Pretty much the entire first hour in particular.) There's a fascinating portrait of collective bargaining buried very deep inside this stultifying sweatshop* portrait, with the migrant workers—who don't seem to belong to a local trade union, nor have any representative other than just whoever's up to confronting the boss that day—basically devoid of any power apart from persistent begging. Which actually works to an extent, though it took me a couple of hours to finally get information I could usefully convert, e.g. that one seemingly average dude takes home only about $US1400/month for what's truly grueling, mindlessly repetitive labor. Need I tell you that we see a whooooole lot of said mindlessly repetitive labor? Don't want to get into a whole Jeanne Dielman rant here, but there's a difference between the mesmerizing precision that Akerman and Seyrig orchestrate and just pointing your camera at actual sweatshop employees sewing for minutes on end, over and over and over. Nor did I find Youth (Spring) ((Why?)) especially compelling as a study of Chinese zoomers—we spend a great deal of time with the workers in their dorm rooms, just hanging out, and are introduced by name (via onscreen text) to I'd say at least 25-30 of them, yet the only ones who stood out to me, separate from their activity in the labor disputes, were the sweetly goofy guy and the woman he keeps hitting on, forcing her to politely but firmly and repeatedly explain that he's just not her type, sorry. No doubt whatsoever that there's a strong 90-ish-minute documentary here, but I guess Wang and I just fundamentally disagree regarding how much first-rate footage he got over those five or six years. (Maybe I'd feel differently if I spoke the language.) I'm very fond of Only the Young and All This Panic, but I'd probably be less fond were they over twice as long, with endless stretches devoted to just watching the kids work a cash register at Taco Bell. 

* I have no idea whether the several workshops we see genuinely qualify as sweatshops. That the owners permitted extensive filming suggests that they felt they had nothing to hide. And we don't see anyone actively mistreated, though the workers clearly believe that they're badly underpaid. These rooms all look like my notion of a sweatshop, anyway.