One Child Nation (2019)
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One Child Nation Movie Review
One Child Nation is a 2019 documentary film directed by Nanfu Wang. It’s a revelatory, horrific history lesson.
Introduced in 1979, the one-child policy in China lasted all the way to 2015. In the meantime, it destroyed countless families, and left many people without potential siblings. The film deals with this tragic, and terrifyingly recent period in Chinese history through a lot of revelatory, truly important interviews that are eye-opening in their raw honesty.
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There are many interviews here that make a true impact. Those with the midwives are some of the worst as they reveal how they operated on thousands of pregnant women. To me, the most horrifying revelation was the fact that they actually dumped babies in the trash. Some of these revelations made the film a true, real life horror.
There is also an interesting conversation near the end of the film which deals with the director getting in touch with the women who sent their second babies abroad, mostly to the United States, and after matching the DNA results, they now can get in contact with the now adult children. But most of those children do not want to get in touch with their biological families which makes an interesting, sad commentary on the US, and how it takes people from other countries and makes them entirely American.
Many may not believe this film, especially those darkest elements to it, but to me they all sound valid as they actually interviewed the real people in charge, the midwives and those who actually witnessed the abortions themselves. That led to the film having a very authentic, believable quality to it. And that is another reason why it is such an important viewing for everyone.
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There is one flaw in the film. It bothered me quite a bit that the movie refused to deal with this policy in another context. Yes, it explores it on a psychological, personal level as we see how it destroyed the lives of so many people in China, but it never at all tackles the policy from a sociological level.
I wanted to know why this was a bad idea, in particular as a population growth prevention method, and how China still continued to evidently get more populous despite these draconian measures having been taken for decades. In terms of politics of it all, the film suffers as the director definitely did not want to tackle that side of it, but the side is important so the film is not the whole story, and it should have obviously been longer in length. Still, they did portray how oppressive and determined the Chinese government has always been, and how terribly it can treat its own citizens, all ultimately for nothing.
But otherwise, One Child Nation is terrific. It just might be the quintessential documentary of 2019 as it deals with an issue that affected millions of people, and is rarely talked about in the Western world. The direction is excellent, the pacing is great, but the film should have been a bit longer in my opinion. I found all of the interviews not only revelatory, but also deeply touching as some break down in tears, leading to a very difficult to watch, heartbreaking movie.
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One Child Nation is the quintessential documentary of the year. It offers a revelatory, deeply touching and even horrific look into the one-child policy in China, and how it influenced so many people. The direction is great, and all of the interviews are heartbreaking. The movie thus becomes a real life horror/tragedy movie that is a difficult, but undeniably important viewing.
