The Violinist Review: Singapore’s WWII Past Comes Beautifully Alive In Splendid Animated Drama

The Violinist (PG)

Starring the voices of Tan Kheng Hua, Adrian Pang, Ayden Sng, Fang Rong, Kazuya Tanabe

Directed by Ervin Han & Raul Garcia

In the juxtaposition of the sublime with the ugly, where sweet strains of music pierce defiantly the harsh brutality of war, there are World War II tales, The Pianist (2002) and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (2001), and China’s Cultural Revolution in 1998’s The Red Violin.

Add now this splendid, lyrical and reminiscent Singapore-produced, Singapore-proud animated movie blending history with fiction, personal passage with a country’s journey. Co-directed by Singaporean Ervin Han and Spanish animator Raul Garcia with class, care and clarity.

Patriotic clarity.

Pivotal here is selfless, real-life Singaporean wartime hero, Lim Bo Seng (voiced by Adrian Pang), not often depicted in films but resurrected back for national duty to re-inspire in our selfish age. Couldn’t be more timely.

Before he becomes a noted resistance leader joining the British forces, Lim meets and gives a violin to Kai (Ayden Sng), a musical prodigy-turned- fearless conscience hearing the call to oppose an enemy who seems cartoonishly sinister even in an actual cartoon.

In the middle of the night, a boorish Japanese soldier barges into a house to take away that precious violin.

Set primarily on our soil with detours to colonial-era Perak and Penang, this flick spans pre-WWII 1930s to the Japanese Occupation to independent Singapore to circa now. It’s voiced by a good, mainly local cast. With Golden Horse Award-winning Singaporean composer Ricky Ho (Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale) creating an original score that’s hauntingly evocative as our very own Cinema Paradiso-poignant theme and the show’s true star.

The violin is described here as sounding “closest to the human voice”. A voice of great joy and enduring anguish. And the ubiquitous unfinished piece, befitting human drama caught up in tumultuous upheaval, is called the ‘Sunset Sonata’. Performed by our Joy Yong, aka Joyy, this could become a National Day staple.

In this manner, The Violinist is a pic that’s different things to different people. A history lesson about love, loss, hope and courage to the young. An eye-opener for foreigners not knowing about Syonan-to (our occupation name). And a trip down memory lane for oldies hankering for a Singapore-relatable version of Dear You.

We’re thrilled to see our Marina Bay skyline, Esplanade theatres, Victoria Memorial Hall, Chinatown, past and present landscapes hand-drawn so lovingly and familiarly as we time-travel into old-world, slower-paced, sepia-toned nostalgia. Stirring up a palpable rush of instant recognition, wistful recollection and unabashed pride.

The artwork looks like a subdued anime. Clean, uncomplicated, with youthful-looking faces.

In our present time, a curious Spanish reporter comes to Singapore to meet a celebrated violinist, Lee Fei (Tan Kheng Hua), asking about her unremarkable old violin. The grand dame narrates the story about unknown musical genius, Kai, lost in history, who once played that instrument.

Her childhood soulmate and playing partner disappeared fighting Japanese troops as a young man who fervently believed the defend-your-homeland ideas and ideals of guerilla leader Lim long ago.

She has been yearning for his return ever since.

We’re flashbacked to a halcyon time when the couple was inseparable. Young Fei (Fang Rong) is the privileged rich girl speaking Japanese with her foreign music tutor. Kai is the street kid brought into her home who plays astonishing virtuoso pieces without needing to learn.

As the winds of war blow their way bringing death and destruction, Fei fends for herself as a single woman harbouring two orphaned children under unquestioned, unpredictable occupation.

A sympathetic Japanese soldier, Takeshi Inoue (Tokyo Vice’s Kazuya Tanabe), is privately kind to her. He’s interesting as this film’s conflicted, revisionist solitary morality. While Kai hides in a Malayan jungle up north waging secret espionage to defeat that very same foe.

Straightaway, we know this tale to be a fable. A story about a character so unique — a prodigy resistance fighter who writes music in a hideout in a jungle? — that’s concocted too easily.

This show doesn’t reach a representational emotional depth found in a more microcosmic war flick such as Japan’s excellent animation, In This Corner Of The World, about the dropping of the atomic bomb. Basically, its plot, despite being eventful and well-researched, seems too straightforward and contrived.

But director Han, who also co-wrote, understands the latent power of fact mixing thoroughly and convincingly with fiction. Along with the romanticisation of things which an animated feature brings.

It allows such wonderful scenes of Kai and Fei playing enthralling music to coolies at Boat Quay. And the former lifting spirits with a Chinese folk tune rendered through the western instrument on a stage in Chinatown.

It also permits blood to be spilled.

The violence here — people get shot — is made more palatable. The glimpse of the dreaded enemy secret police, Kempeitai, seems less scary whereas live-action pics like China’s Dead to Rights show how terrifying Japanese military occupation really was.

“The British have their spies. So do we,” sneers an interrogator ominously.

In this brutal way, The Violinist is a great pic which punctures the bad with the beautiful, despair with hope, betrayal with loyalty and surrender with strength, using the sway of a truly moving sound.

“Stories and music are all we have,” says someone here.

Long may this play true. (4/5 stars) in cinemas now

Photo: Robot Playground Media /TV ON Producciones/Altri Occhi