Ai Weiwei's "Vivos" - Pretty to look at but too detached

New contributor Ren Jender reporting from Sundance...

 

In 2014, Mexican police attacked students from a rural teachers' college, Ayotzinapa (known as a hotbed of leftist activism) in Iguala, Guerrero. They killed six of the students but injured many more and abducted another 43, who have never been found. In his new documentary Vivos, artist Ai WeiWei (Human Flow) focuses on the families left behind (and in limbo) When the families speak about the disappearance of their sons, siblings and partners, Ai captures the lyricism of their stories. One father memorably states:

That night, it rained and rained and rained."

The title of the documentary is taken from the chant led by one of the missing students' mothers who has become an activist who organizes sit-ins and marches, "You took them alive (vivos) and that's how we want them returned." All the parents on some level know that their sons are dead, just as the mother of a student in a persistent vegetative state in the six years since the attack must know that her son will never wake up. But still she says, "Maybe in eight years."

The images of the rural families homes and day-to-day routines are beautifully framed and shot, but perhaps a little too familiar: women making tortillas and men harvesting crops are staples of documentary films that take place in the Mexican countryside, especially those made by outsiders. When we see these scenes repeatedly the film inches perilously close to the satirical #MyLatinoNovel Twitter thread.

What's most surprising about this film is how emotionally detached Ai seems. A Google search of "dissident artist" brings up "Ai Weiwei" as the first result: when he still lived in his native China he was imprisoned and severely beaten for his criticism of the government. The fate of these students could have been his own. But Ai seems bent on avoiding the traditional documentary arc which would focus on the main activist mother as she coalesces first the families of the missing students then the families of the over 40,000 people who have gone missing in Mexico since 2006 to take to the streets. Instead Ai doesn't even let us know her name.

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