Film Review: One Second

Images courtesy of Rialto Distribution.

I was sent a screener link for this film, instead of seeing it on the big screen like the director probably intended. I learned after watching it that this film had been withdrawn from its initial premiere in 2019, and some critics at the time had believed there were political motivations to that withdrawal. After having seen the film and its portrayal of China under the rule of Chairman Mao, it's easy to see why it was recalled, and while I hope nothing too crucial was removed, there is a chance the film originally took a much harder stance against this regime, and possibly drew comparisons to the current political climate in China. But it's impossible to know for certain, I'm simply being skeptical because there's a political message hidden in this film somewhere, under the thinly veiled jabs at the propaganda produced in China at the time and its effect on the people, so enamored by cinema "they'll watch anything that gets projected".

With the watered-down political messages out of the way, this is still a well-crafted and enjoyable film.

I'm much more familiar with Zhang Yimou's filmmaking because of his beautiful Wuxia epics, so it was interesting to see that visual style still sort of translated to a more modern (in the sense that 1964 Communist China is more modern than Ancient China), and more intimate story, focusing on two central characters looking for solace in a particular news film reel. An escaped prisoner wants to see footage of his daughter that he hasn't seen in years due to being wrongfully imprisoned under the oppressive laws of the time, and a young poverty-stricken girl is looking for any film to use to create a new lampshade for her bullied little brother. They enter the story by lying about being in different units of a crew transporting a film reel to a small desert town, while in the process of stealing the reel back and forth from one another, in an increasingly ridiculous cat-and-mouse game, with lies stacking on lies until the breaking point, at around the half-hour mark, when the main story finally begins.

This is a bittersweet story of the powerful role that film plays in people’s lives beyond storytelling alone. The main characters have their own relationship to the film reel, beyond simply enjoying a movie.

All of the characters in this film are fans of cinema in some way, be it just watching the films that get shown, or in their deep respect for the projectionist (named "Mr Movie") and helping him in any way. There's a brilliantly crafted subplot where the townspeople team up for a makeshift restoration job for one of the film reels, a lot of detail is brought to showing how they go about cleaning and taking care of the damaged reel, even having a pivotal dialogue scene take place with two characters carefully rewinding the reel.

The cinematography is great, as to be expected from Yimou's recurring director of photography, Zhao Xiaoding, from the gorgeous wide-shot sequences in the desert that bookend the film, to the more detailed close-ups of the process of cleaning up the film reel. Yimou and Xiaoding take great care to ensure that everything is given a proper level of importance through visuals alone, as there are long sections of this film with very little dialogue, and even none at all. This minimal style of dialogue definitely would've helped the film find an international audience had it not been taken from that initial premiere. A film about a film being stolen and brought back damaged had itself been stolen from the public and brought back.

One Second is showing in select cinemas now.

Follow Nick on Twitter and Letterboxd.