Prior to May 2015, if you had asked people in Taiwan these questions, their responses would have been overwhelmingly pessimistic. “The Walkers,” a 150-minute documentary, records the dancer Lin Li-chen stretching, creating stage props, and gardening with her husband. It follows Lin and Legend Lin Dance Theater dancers as they travel to performance sites up in the mountains and down along the seashore. The visual feel of the film is movingly elegant and warm, but the action is light and the pace is slow.
An “unpopular” documentary grosses handsomely
The film has neither the airborne majesty of “Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above” nor the passion and energy of “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” In fact, it has none of the ingredients that had brought success to other Taiwan documentaries in recent years. From every angle, it would seem that “The Walkers” was destined to be a box-office flop.
It was being shown in three Taipei City theaters for fewer than 10 screenings per day. It played to packed houses, grossed NT$1 million (US$32,222) in its first week and saw its run extended to four weeks—despite the challenge from Hollywood blockbusters. It then moved to theaters in central, southern and eastern Taiwan, completely confounding the predictions of experts. Wherever it was shown, it both filled seats and moved audiences to tears. The director Cheng Yu-chieh said he cried from beginning to end during the film. “I had to stifle my sobs so they would not be audible.”
“The widespread support the film received can only be described as heaven’s doing,” Chen said. “Similar documentaries in the past took NT$500,000 at most, but mine has already surpassed the NT$2 million mark.”
Initially pessimistic about the movie’s prospects, Chen said this was due to the experience of her good friend Shen Ko-shang—a leading new generation director. Despite winning an NT$1 million Taipei Film Award earlier this year, Shen’s “A Rolling Stone” only earned NT$450,000 at the box office. “It’s not that I don’t have confidence in my own work,” Chen said. “It’s a general problem with the film industry in Taiwan.”
What magic did “The Walkers” conjure to overcome Taiwan’s unfriendly film environment? Why did audience tears and word of mouth bring it such surprising success? A key reason is undoubtedly the director herself, Chen received practically no financial compensation for her work during the 10 years she spent making the film.
“I shoot movies to find answers about life,” she said, adding that her energy and focus was devoted to creating the film for that simple reason. Since Chen was sincerely looking for answers to life’s most important questions, doing a slipshod job was out of the question. “It was my good fortune to be able to document the lives of these hardworking artists. I wanted to know what filled them with such energy. Whether making a dramatic film or a documentary, I try to put myself into my subjects’ shoes and understand what animates their lives.”
Up from a low point
Just a few years after Chen graduated from college in 1997, her 2000 movie “Bundled” earned the awards for best dramatic film and best new director at the Taipei Film Festival. She said that being young put her in the spotlight, and for a while she felt the pressure. Chen’s filmmaking almost stopped. “People would say I was a little depressed.”
As far as Chen is concerned, Taiwan this century does not hold the same sense of possibilities that it had in the 1990s. “The prevailing systems are more set in place, so there’s less space to do something different. People’s bodies are subject to the dictates of capitalism. They are being told what their eyes, nose and mouth should look like. I really want to resist that.” As a young, sensitive director who had big issues with the system, she inevitably suffered emotionally and was confronted with creative obstacles.
It was during that low period that Chen encountered two dancers: the Japanese national Rita Qin and Lin Li-chen, who is the leading figure in “The Walkers.”
“The two have very different styles. Qin’s is ugly and twisted, whereas Lin and Legend Lin Dance Theater’s are very clean. But both dancers are true to themselves, and they impressed in the same way—making me wonder how it’s possible for a person to possess that much bodily energy.” When Qin came to Taiwan to form Asiabaroque, Chen joined her troupe as a volunteer photographer. And in 2004, when Lin won the National Award for the Arts, related organizations asked her to shoot a short documentary in conjunction with the honor. Chen did not hesitate.
After the project’s filmmaker was decided upon, Lin hoped to see all of the director’s work. Chen said the first time she met Lin, “she told me she had watched ‘Bundled’ three times, and explained what moved her and what could have been better.” The two passionately discussed the barriers they had encountered in artistic creation and filmmaking, and how they were able to overcome them.
More than filmmaker and film subject, Chen and Lin resembled creative collaborators who were friends and teachers to each other.
Chen followed Legend Lin Dance Theater up to the mountains and down to the sea for a decade, shooting more than 1,000 hours of film. Yet she received no pay as a director and to make ends meet had to accept other cases and do odd jobs. Expenses for equipment and personnel totaled NT$8 million.
Apart from signing a contract with Taiwan’s Public Television Service, which brought her NT$1 million to toss into the kitty, she did not apply for other grants, and on the eve of screening had to scrape together NT$1.17 million via crowd-funding to pay for distribution expenses.
“The process offered some answers to my questions about the meaning of life,” Chen said. As she shot Qin and Lin, her depression gradually lifted. In 2007 she returned to the film world with the release of “God, Man, Dog.” For her, “The Walkers” is not just a film that took her 10 years to shoot. It represents a harvest reaped from life experience and a critical yet warm offering to Taiwan.
Regaining a sense of craftsmanship
In Chen’s mind, the film is a present to Taiwan. If she wanted to win awards at film festivals, she could have crafted a more artistic offering, one that would have appealed on a larger scale to the festival circuit. But Chen was looking to recapture a lost sense of craftsmanship.
“Today, Taiwan is a fickle and impatient place. Everything’s fake. The food is fake. The culture is fake,” she said. As for the lost sense of craftsmanship, Chen cites the example of potters: “When potters used to make cups, apart from possessing the requisite skill, they also threw their energy and spirit into the process of making the cups before presenting them to buyers.”
In Chen’s eyes, Lin’s dancing is the ultimate example of elevating craftsmanship to the level of art. “When dancing, every move should be done with honesty and integrity. There should be nothing false about it. It’s that simple.”
Having experienced her own personal turmoil at the beginning of the century, Chen sees “The Walkers” as being about those engaging in the physical act and those striding along the path of personal cultivation. She believes that one can only attain serenity by acting authentically, an approach validated by the emotional response of audiences to her film.
“‘The Walkers’ really struck a chord with a lot of people,” she said. “It seems that they really needed a film like that.”
[by Ho Hsin-chieh / tr. by Jonathan Barnard]