‘Man in Black’ Review: Wang Bing’s Mid-Length Art Piece is Part Memoir, Part Music, All Mesmerizing
variety.comJessica Kiang The man is not in black. He is in nothing at all. Wearing his nakedness calmly, like a fact so obvious it requires no explanation, an 86-year-old Chinese male stands up slowly in the otherwise empty gallery of Paris’ famous Bouffes du Nord theatre.
The artfully peeling, faded-grandeur interior, dim but for gathered pools of warm light, booms with the sound of his wooden seat swinging back into place, then with the creaks of the floorboards under his bare feet.
This is the arresting opening to Chinese documentarian Wang Bing’s other Cannes 2023 film, “Man in Black,” a project so diametrically different from his Competition entry “Youth: Spring” that it feels hard to credit them both to the same person.
Perhaps we shouldn’t. This brief but profoundly moving film represents such a consummate collaboration between director, cinematographer, editor and subject that its authorship could be recorded as a four-way tie.
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