Wu Qingyuan was an exile who left China in the 1930s to become Japan’s leading exponent of the strategy game, Go.
Wu’s battle with tuberculosis, his search for spiritual fulfillment and 17-year reign as the country’s undefeated champion provide a stately series of tableaux with the minimalist detail of a poem.
Chang captures Wu’s dedication and respect for a game whose intricacies reflect the vicissitudes of his own life, building an intense treatise on being true to one’s self while bending with the breeze.
Rewarding concentration, it also reveals much about twice-banned director Tian Zhuangzhuang’s own attitude to pursuing his art in turbulent times.