Ascension

Movie: Ascension

Nominated for: Best Documentary Feature

How I watched: Paramount+

When I fell asleep: Nope, morning viewing

When it had me: I was in and out

When it lost me: Watching people on water slides

What I have to say:

This was a very strange documentary. No talking to camera, no interviews, no recognizable documentary structure. Instead, you are a fly on the wall for...umm, well a lot of stuff. There are people being hired to work in factories, people working different jobs, people in training seminars, people on vacation, people at dinner parties. And you just sort of observe everything.

The film begins and ends with a quote "I ascend to find that everything has already been razed." I felt in watching the film that it was about the life of the worker in China and the changes happening to what that looks like. China's economy is flirting with capitalistic principles and this film seems to want to capture that notion in a sort of visual poetry.

For a while I found it interesting to try and make the connections between one set of images and another. Why does she juxtapose these workers with this speaker? But eventually I grew weary of guesswork and tried to let the images wash over me. When the film settled into a water park for what felt like a very long time, I really wanted out. I had no earthly idea why it was important for me to see that at that moment and I had lost all thread of what the film maker was going for.

There are interesting vignettes throughout but I found it too loosely assembled to work for me as a whole piece.