Ai Wei­wei: Nev­er Sorry

What is the biggest dif­fer­ence between cats and humans? You can hear Ai Weiwei’s take on this spe­cial­ist ques­tion ear­ly on in this absorb­ing doc­u­men­tary por­trait of the con­tro­ver­sial Chi­nese artist. We won’t spoil things by reveal­ing the answer, but the log­ic behind his response reveals the side­ways cre­ativ­i­ty and sense of sly polit­i­cal resis­tance that has made Wei­wei one of China’s lead­ing cul­tur­al figures.

Fêt­ed both at home and abroad, Wei­wei helped design the icon­ic Bird’s Nest Sta­di­um for the Bei­jing Olympics, and made news here by cov­er­ing the vast floor space of the Tate Mod­ern Tur­bine Hall with 100m porce­lain sun­flower seeds. But his art has increas­ing­ly tak­en on a polit­i­cal dimen­sion, and he has emerged in recent years as one of the most promi­nent crit­ics of the Com­mu­nist authorities.

A deserv­ing sub­ject for a fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary, then, and jour­nal­ist-turned-film­mak­er Ali­son Klay­man gen­er­al­ly does a fine job in con­vey­ing his impor­tance. Fol­low­ing the artist in the lead-up to a cou­ple of big inter­na­tion­al exhi­bi­tions, this is a fas­ci­nat­ing account of Weiwei’s work­ing methods.

Like Damien Hirst, the 55-year-old is more of an ideas man than hands-on artist – over­see­ing teams of work­ers who actu­al­ly pro­duce the large-scale exhibits that fig­ure in his recent shows. As he mat­ter-of-fact­ly explains to Klay­man: ​“I main­ly make decisions.”

But these deci­sions have late­ly adopt­ed a bel­liger­ent stance towards the gov­ern­ing régime, an atti­tude that found a huge audi­ence when Wei­wei start­ed tweet­ing his defi­ance to a com­mu­ni­ty of ded­i­cat­ed acolytes. Inves­ti­gat­ing the deaths of thou­sands of chil­dren in the 2008 Sichuan earth­quake, Wei­wei was beat­en sense­less by local cops and had to have surgery a few weeks later.

Wei­wei doc­u­ment­ed this, and his sub­se­quent attempts to charge the offi­cers who attacked him, shout­ing as loud­ly as pos­si­ble online about this offi­cial attempt to silence him. A true dis­senter for the age of social net­work­ing, Wei­wei prac­tices polit­i­cal protest as per­for­mance art (or maybe the oth­er way round) – a point com­pelling­ly made by this documentary’s count­less shots of Wei­wei com­pul­sive­ly tweet­ing the progress of his offi­cial com­plaint towards the cop who beat him up.

It’s impres­sive stuff, and the film leaves you with a strong admi­ra­tion for Weiwei’s qui­et brav­ery. Unset­tled by his vocal oppo­si­tion, the régime has tried sub­tler ways to sup­press his views, most recent­ly detain­ing him for 81 days for tax evasion.

Klay­man is there, with her cam­era, when he returns from cus­tody, his cus­tom­ary opti­mism momen­tar­i­ly dimmed. But he’s soon back tweet­ing, back wor­ry­ing his mum, who at one point is poignant­ly filmed express­ing con­cerns about the risks of so much protest­ing. ​“What can you do?” asks Wei­wei with a shrug.

Nev­er Sor­ry isn’t the most sophis­ti­cat­ed of films. With the excep­tion of a few gos­sipy tid­bits – notably the mar­ried Weiwei’s affair with a younger woman that pro­duces his first son – this por­trait doesn’t probe the artist’s dark­er aspects. At times, it even plays like a cam­paign video for Weiwei’s views. Still, these are views worth lis­ten­ing to, and expressed at real per­son­al risk by this remark­able man. Biased though it may be, Nev­er Sor­ry has noth­ing to apol­o­gise for.