A panoramic observational documentary exploring the wide-ranging social effects of China’s recent emergence as an economic superpower, Ascension is a visually overstuffed, mostly mesmerising audiovisual symphony, even if it relies a little too heavily on arresting images over hard facts. But once you surrender to its untethered, free-associating style, director Jessica Kingdon’s film becomes an impressionistic feast, full of wry voyeuristic detail and deft little human vignettes.
The Brooklyn-based, Chinese-American Kingdon and her producer-partner Nathan Truesdell gathered footage for Ascension in 51 different locations during four years of intermittent China visits, which helps explain the rich range of material here, but also the diffuse and disjointed structure. The film-makers initially planned a triptych of shorts with more focus on industrial waste, but during the project’s gestation their interest shifted more towards social class, consumerism and capitalism. There were doubtless both losses and gains in this more widescreen approach, but it makes for an enjoyably maximalist viewing experience. After winning the Best Documentary prize at Tribeca film festival, Ascension was picked up for distribution by MTV Films. In December it was added to the Oscars shortlist in the documentary category. It opens theatrically in the UK and other European markets this month.
Propulsive and restless, Ascension bounds along with a fast-paced musical rhythm, switching between different workplace settings with little or no explanatory context. Kingdon cites iconic documentaries such as Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi (1982), Michael Glawogger’s Workingman’s Death (2005), and Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s Our Daily Bread (2005) as inspirations on her grand-scale vision of 21st century China as a vast engine of production and consumption, regimented work and social aspiration. There are distant echoes of earlier silent classics too, notably Walter Ruttman’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927) and Dziga Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera (1929). Reinforcing the parallels with Koyaanistqatsi is composer Dan Deacon’s score, a bustling orchestral gallop in Philip Glass vein, which incorporates audio elements recorded at the locations seen on screen.
Viewed through European eyes, Ascension sometimes feels like a deep dive into the jarring science-fiction otherness of modern China, but more often it is like gazing at a funhouse mirror image of our own western consumerist system. Following a loosely upward trajectory through the social class hierarchy, Kingdon observes street recruiters hiring minimum-wage workers to make smartphones in barrack-like factories, sweatshop employees casually discussing how to get ahead by bribing crooked bosses, internet influencers tweaking their personal “brand” on camera, office staff engaged in militaristic drills to affirm their company loyalty, new-money elites enjoying opulent lifestyles that would have been unthinkable just one generation ago, and much more. Premier Xi Jingping’s “Chinese Dream” policy of modernising and enriching his notionally Communist nation into an ultra-capitalist success story is the largely unexamined back story here.
Some chapters in Ascension might have made great stand-alone documentaries. A sequence featuring female factory workers crafting custom-made luxury sex dolls is a compellingly creepy trip into the Uncanny Valley, like an episode of Netflix’s future-shock drama series Black Mirror. Another section, in which trainee butlers learn how to recreate a Downton Abbey fantasy of European upper-class etiquette, feels closer to farce with its forensically precise dining-table rules and diplomatic pointers about dealing with rich asshole employers: “you can curse him behind his back, but when facing him you have to pretend to be obedient.”
With no talking-head commentary, no central narrative spine, no recurring protagonists and minimal dialogue, the unstructured sprawl of Ascension weakens its storytelling power at times. Any political commentary on China’s authoritarian regime is merely implicit, only surfacing briefly in overheard conversational fragments in which office workers discuss the trade-off between human rights and economic success. But even if their intent is opaque, Kingdon and Truesdell excel themselves in serving up strikingly lovely images, reaching a sublime peak in aerial drone shots of vast bicycle graveyards and huge aquatic leisure parks. There is dystopian horror at play here, but also great beauty, flashes of humour, and a warm undercurrent of common humanity.
Director: Jessica Kingdon
Producers: Kira Simon-Kennedy, Jessica Kingdon, Nathan Truesdell
Executive producers: Ryan Kampe, David and Natasha Dolby, Kathryn Everett, Bryn Mooser, Tony Hsieh
Cinematography: Jessica Kingdon, Nathan Truesdell
Editor: Jessica Kingdon
Music: Dan Deacon
Production company: Mouth Numbing Spicy Crab (US)
World sales: Visit Films, Brooklyn
In Mandarin, English
97 minutes
