The filmmakers of Invisible Nation have touted their film as the first with unprecedented access to President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan. Tsai’s face is plastered all over the marketing materials, and so is the brave, righteous decision to address her as “President” and show Taiwan’s official Republic of China flag. But commendable politics don’t always or necessarily translate to good filmmaking, and Invisible Nation, despite being so staunchly against the oppressive government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), itself becomes propaganda for the ruling Taiwanese party.
Directed by Vanessa Hope, Invisible Nation indeed starts with scenes of Tsai in the Taiwanese equivalents to the Air Force One and White House, but the “unprecedented access” to Tsai pretty much ends there. Despite Tsai undoubtedly being the center of the film’s marketing, she is only barely in the documentary, and there is only one scene involving a cat that reveals anything intimate or personal about Tsai. Other than that, she remains as inscrutable and self-admittedly “cold” as her presidential campaigns have shown, and a documentary should definitely be revealing more than candidate-approved ads. There is a potential to do something intimately powerful like Navalny here, but as a profile documentary, Invisible Nation is a failure.
But that might very well be a case of false expectations spawned from false advertising. Invisible Nation is a documentary about modern Taiwan instead, so let’s see how it does in that arena. In lieu of actually profiling Tsai — whose personal life has the potential to be interesting, since one can’t imagine a woman as the President of the United States, let alone an unmarried one without a traditional “family image” — the film spends its runtime being a quick-bite, Wikipedia-style lesson on the history of Taiwan. It jumps all over a timeline from 1945 to the present, and it seems to have no plan or organization around any of its topics. Even if one forgives the shallow basicness of the film’s information for the purpose of introducing foreigners to the topic of Taiwan, these imaginary viewers are probably still left confused by all the timeline-jumping.
The brevity of the documentary’s information means that many worthwhile topics go untouched. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which produces 90% of the world’s smartphone chips and is pretty much single-handedly responsible for Taiwan’s strategic importance on the global geopolitical stage, gets only a five-second mention. The kowtowing case of K-pop star Chou Tzu-yu, part of China’s crackdown on Taiwanese celebrities’ national self-identities, can alone make for a substantial feature-length documentary. But because of Hope’s greed to include as much material as possible in her 90-minute runtime, everything remains surface-level. And as we have learned from both narrative and documentary films, when appealing to the imaginary “general, Western” audience (who is already hard sell for a documentary about Taiwan anyway), it is not broadness that will catch their attention, but a universality derived from specificity. This film does not reach that level.
An even direr consequence: when information is presented so briefly and shallowly, there is no time or space for critical thought. As such, the film ultimately ends up being propaganda for the people who gave Hope access to Tsai: Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). While the DPP can very much be categorized as the “good” to China’s “evil,” they are not without failings of their own.
Notice how Invisible Nation covers every single president since the democratization of Taiwan except, glaringly, the corrupt Chen Shui-bian of DPP, who governed Taiwan for eight long years from 2000 to 2008 before being sentenced to jail. Despite the DPP’s progressive, pro-gay marriage image, its domestic policies have made it increasingly unpopular with young people nowadays, with a significant populace voting for third-party candidate Ke Wen-je in the most recent presidential elections. Why? Why are young people disillusioned with the DPP? If you watched this film, you would leave thinking the DPP are saintly heroes and the bastions of democracy without any faults, and any propaganda for the establishment, even when it coincides with the side of the ostensible “good guys,” is dangerous.
Perhaps this is the fate of a documentary directed by an expat. Hope is a white American woman, and not to discredit her research, dedication, or time and experience living in Taiwan, but Invisible Nation feels like a movie made by an outsider. The title itself tells all — who is Taiwan invisible to? Probably not its own people. There is no nuanced understanding of the China-Taiwan-Hong Kong situation. There is no intimate knowledge of the quirky, playful aspects and culture of Taiwanese politics — what the ground actually feels like. The foundational, historical trauma of the “White Terror” martial law period spanning 1949-87 feels like an afterthought until it is, thankfully, addressed in the film’s closing third, and even that is not enough. It feels wrongly disproportionate: not enough weight is given to all the blood and literal lives shed for Taiwan’s democracy today.
Perhaps as an American, Hope feels the need to educate her compatriots and spread the Taiwanese cause to her home country, therefore making the blandest, most cookie-cutter “intro to Taiwan” documentary possible. But film, even when in the documentary form, should not feel like a lesson. Because there is no specificity in the film, Invisible Nation ends up appealing to no one. It is a shame because the film’s general politics are very much in the right place, but that can only take you so far. Even if we are on the right side of history, the overwhelming takeaway is that we can do better than this.
