In director Chan Tze Woon’s hybrid of documentary and dramatization “Blue Island,” real-life students from contemporary Hong Kong perform re-enactments of the political struggles of previous generations.
Two students, Anson Sham and Siu Ying, take the place of a couple, Chan Hak-chi and Git Hing, who fled to Hong Kong after the Cultural Revolution in 1973; part of the re-enactment of the escape is intercut with documentary footage from a crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong in 2019. Elsewhere, Keith Fong Chung-yin, a student activist, meets and plays Kenneth Lam, who turned returned to Beijing in 1989 in solidarity with protesters in Tiananmen Square.
The recent experiences of younger subjects color their portraits. “You’re not just playing a 20-year-old Kenneth in the ’80s. You’re also playing yourself,” the director tells Fong, in one of the many moments the film breaks the fourth wall. Elsewhere, Raymond Young, jailed by the British for bulletins he broadcast in 1967, sits in a jail cell with Kelvin Tam Kwan-long, the student protester who plays him (who notes he was charged riot and awaits trial himself), and tells him that time will erode his ideals.
“Blue Island” shows how the people of Hong Kong have redefined themselves over time. Tam, while playing Young in 1967, defiantly tells a British official that he is Chinese. A moment later, Tam, still in costume but now appearing as himself, insists to an interrogator that he is not Chinese, but a Hong Konger.
The film ends with a long silent montage of people accused of participating in pro-democracy activism. It’s impossible to watch “Blue Island” without admiring their courage. The past-present parallelism is provocative, but it also seems slightly superficial – a way of eliding distinctions and rationalizing history.
blue island
Unclassified. In Cantonese, Mandarin and English, with subtitles. Duration: 1h37. In theaters.